Football is considered a man’s sport, but the most powerful men in the sport are swayed by Mrs. Lamari – Mbappe’s mother.
Like every boy reaching his teenage years, Kylian Mbappe came home one day and told his mother about what his new teammates were doing. Mbappe has just started training with Monaco’s first team, the older guys have their shoes cleaned at the end of each day. Mbappe told his mother about what he saw. He said that now he was a first team player so he didn’t need to clean his shoes anymore. She listens to understand. And she forced her son to continue polishing his own shoes.
If Mbappe is the most powerful player today, a super striker who makes all the most powerful and richest teams on the planet wait in line to negotiate, his mother, Fayza Lamari, is considered a fierce negotiator. best in the world of football. With Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, most of the top teams in the Premier League and rich guys from Saudi Arabia clamoring for his son’s signature, Lamari is the most sought-after agent in the transfer market.
But she is not an official representative. At least on paper it is like that. She is not a lawyer or an accountant. She doesn’t even care too much about football. “I work for the kid,” Lamari told Le Parisien in 2021. “Kylian is my boss.”
Last year, there were three people sitting around the negotiating table with Real Madrid. Mbappe’s contract with PSG is about to expire and the Royal Spanish team is confident that they are about to successfully recruit the star they have been pursuing for a decade. The first person is Lamari, in charge of managing his son’s commercial side. Mr. Wilfried, Mbappe’s father, is professionally responsible. And finally, there is Delphine Verheyden, the lawyer in charge of the legal department who has worked for the French striker since 2015.
Lamari and Wilfried are no longer living together but have always maintained a friendly relationship. When Mbappe was young, when he was a student at AS Bondy, a training facility located in the suburbs of Paris and then moved to Monaco, Wilfied was the person who had the greatest influence. But when Mbappe became world champion at the 2018 World Cup and became a global sports icon, the two women beside him, Verheyden and Lamari, took over everything.
Initially, Lamari struggled under tremendous pressure. She was born in Bondy, where she remained all her life, but her parents were from Kabylia, northern Algeria. She worked as an administrative officer in Bondy’s administration and Wilfried was a football coach. Her family is not familiar with money. When money and fame suddenly came along with Mbappe’s explosion on the field in 2018, at the age of 17, Lamari gained 24kg due to stress. When Mbappe rejected Real Madrid to join PSG in a deal worth up to 180 million euros, Lamari was truly overwhelmed by the huge amount of money. “For three years, we didn’t dare touch that money,” she said. “We have poor man’s syndrome. I’m afraid that one day, they will come to wake me up and ask me to return the money.”
But then she gradually adapted to her new life, began to show determination and fight. She calls it the “Kabyle face” of herself, with a tenacious, even stubborn personality that she believes she inherited from her parents. That quality was demonstrated by Ms. Lamari at the age of 20, when she was a handball player for AS Bondy in the French National Championship. “On the field, Lamari is a warrior and also very hot-tempered,” Mr. Jean-Louis Kimmoun, former AS Bondy coach, described in Le Parisien newspaper in 2017. “Don’t provoke Lamari, she is not always not friendly”.
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As the criticism and controversy surrounding Mbappe became increasingly fierce, Lamari felt he had to speak up to protect his son. She had an argument with Veronique Rabiot, mother of Adrien Rabiot, when Veronique accused Mbappe of being too arrogant after the French team’s loss to Switzerland at Euro 2020. She expressed dissatisfaction with Neymar and Dani Alves, two of her seniors. Mbappe at PSG because she often made fun of her son’s appearance. Last April, she spoke up to defend Mbappe again after the striker publicly criticized PSG for using his image in a promotional clip selling tickets. “PSG is not Kylian Saint-Germain,” the player wrote.
Lamari not only protected Mbappe, she also negotiated for her son. The controversy over the promotional clip made Mbappe and the player’s mother crazy. They are angry because they cannot control the image Mbappe wants to portray. They want Mbappe to become a perfect role model both on and off the field, a sportsman associated with noble goals and bringing positive change. Michael Jordan is the example Mbappe’s family follows. Lamari made the pilgrimage back to Cameroon last month, when Mbappe played football with children in Djebale, the village his father grew up in. During negotiations with Real last year, Lamari and Verheyden insisted that complete control of Mbappé’s image rights was a fundamental part of the deal.
That negotiation was a failure for Real Madrid and a disaster for PSG, but at least a financial success for Mbappe. Real Madrid felt shocked by being rejected by the French striker, while PSG’s victory was short-lived.
Mbappe’s new deal in Paris includes a golden handshake worth 100 million euros and a salary of 50 million euros, but there is no long-term agreement. The contract is only valid for 2 years, with the option to extend for another year for Mbappe, not PSG. 12 months after signing a new contract, Mbappe only has 1 year left on his contract to be able to leave on a free transfer. And this striker informed PSG of not continuing with this team after the second year of the contract. In terms of maximizing value while retaining control, this deal is groundbreaking.
If Mbappe had done it his mother’s way, things might have been different. Ms. Lamari accepted her and Verheyden encouraged Mbappe to join Real Madrid while Mr. Wilfried wanted his son to stay at PSG. But Lamari affirmed that the final decision always belongs to Mbappe, something this player always emphasizes. “We discuss everything but they never oppose my decisions and never impose, since they were children,” Mbappe said. “My parents always explained to me which decision was the best and if I made the wrong choice, I had to take responsibility like a man.”
However, Lamari’s influence on Mbappe makes many people uncomfortable. The representative of Ferland Mendy, a defender who plays for Real Madrid and is Mbappe’s teammate on the French team, said that Mrs. Lamari’s influence scared Mbappe of losing the opportunity to join the Royal team. Last year, Zlatan Ibrahimovic also criticized the striker’s parents for being greedy for power. “His parents have become his lawyers, agents and coaches,” the Swedish legend commented. “Who do they think they are? They should keep their mouths shut. His future depends on him, as a professional player.”
Ms. Lamari’s critics are often men, who hold the dominant power in soccer. Mr. Jorge Messi has been the representative of superstar Lionel Messi for many years and has not been criticized for letting his son join Inter Miami instead of returning to Barcelona. Others believe that Lamari’s total mental focus on his son was in fact an advantage. She is completely independent from all influences, unlike agents, also known as super agents with many connections. That was Lamari’s leverage in the negotiations. She does not have to maintain personal relationships, she only focuses on one thing: protecting the future of her “boss” and also protecting the future of her beloved son.
In that sense, Lamari is not actually performing the duties of a representative but is performing the duties of a mother. Like when young Mbappe complained to his mother about the older brothers in Monaco being allowed to clean their shoes, Lamari saw it as her duty as a mother to keep her son from becoming complacent. She scolded Mbappe when lip-reading experts showed her son was criticizing his teammates. She rejected all of Mbappe’s complaints when the striker refused inappropriate sponsors. They talked about music and women. Mbappe revealed that his musical idol is Daniel Balavoine, a French singer in the 1980s. As a coincidence, Balavoine’s most famous song is called: Mon fils ma bataille – My son is the battle my war!
