Kylian Mbappe carries France’s hopes of breaking down Uruguay to take the World Cup by storm

Fresh from knocking out Argentina, Mbappe can take a hold on the World Cup like the great young players before him

Among the most invigorating elements of moments like Kylian Mbappe’s 11th-minute run against Argentina is not just the exhilarating feeling that comes as you watch at the time, eyes wide open as you see it happen, but also the optimistic excitement from what it suggests might come in the future.

The new French star just looked like he would keep going, in every sense.

This is also the type of excitement that only a precocious young player can provide, as he suggests the physical outer limits of the sport could be forced up, and that only a truly international stage like the World Cup 2018 can really allow.

It was a similar feeling to Michael Owen against Argentina in 1998, Pele 1958 and Wayne Rooney against France in 2004.

Or, if you want go beyond football, it was Jonah Lomu at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Tiger Woods at the 1997 US Masters.

The invigoration is that it’s as much about what might happen next with such a player as what’s happening now.

That’s just as well because up next is maybe the best defence in international football in Uruguay, and what might be required to defy such a backline is maybe another moment that seems to defy belief like that run against Argentina.

It’s just that this Uruguayan defence will simply not offer up the ludicrous space in behind that France’s more supine last-16 opponents did, nor are any of their defenders likely to be panicked into the kind of brain-dead foul that Marcos Rojo was.

Mbappe may have to step up again in another sense, and offer more, but then that’s what really making a World Cup your own and making your legacy – in the manner he now should – is all about. The teenager, like so many at that age with that talent, looks ready and unfazed.

There’s also the fact that Mbappe has already defied an issue with his own team.

The continuing problem with Didier Deschamps’s France has been that the manager just can’t seem to put out a system that actually enhances the ability of any of his attackers. Whether he is unable to or unwilling to because of a fundamentally defensive mindset is still hard to say, but the result has always been the same: his best talents look constrained.

Except, that is, Mbappe.

Kylian Mbappe will be pivotal to France's hopes of beating Uruguay in the World Cup quarter-finals (EPA)

It is as if he is too livewire a player, too energetic. As if, no matter where he is placed or in what formation, it is just in his nature to burst out and forward.

Mbappe defies Deschamps’s restrictions and circuit breakers too.

It is as if he can’t be constrained.

Uruguay will offer a big test of that.

Mbappe has the potential to tahe the World Cup by storm (AFP/Getty)

Even then, though, that might just provide the stage for a show of Mbappe’s other talents to an even wider audience.

Something else that was so exciting about his performance against Argentina was that the 12th-minute run wasn’t even his most exacting moment, and may not have been his best. What was next in that game were those exacting finishes, themselves of the type that can only come from a player fully comfortable with the surroundings, and completely unhesitating.

If Uruguay do succeed in forcing Mbappe into tighter spaces, he might just display his almost underrated ability to finish from such circumstances.

One of the men that gave us a similar moment as a mere boy actually thinks that might be his best quality, and better than a predecessor like Thierry Henry at the same age.

“He’s got a lot,” Owen told The Independent a few years ago. “A better comparison is someone like Henry, but Henry, even when he came over to England with Arsenal, he wasn’t a goalscorer, he scored a couple but all of sudden he just became an animal of a goalscorer, whereas Mbappe almost looks ahead of him, in terms of how many goals he scores. He’ll do well to be as good as Henry, but he’s certainly on the right track.”

Kylian Mbappe scored twice to help France put Argentina out of the World Cup (Reuters)

Mbappe might be exactly the right solution for the problem of facing a defence like Uruguay’s. He might well be the solution for the problem of tactics like Deschamps’s.

He might well be capable of going to the next level. He has the stage. He looks like he can keep going, to become the first player to completely dominate a World Cup since Ronaldo 2002. That is an even more invigorating idea. He can thereby pass out many modern legends, as well as many defenders.