Breakout performances seemed to be everywhere at the 2018 World Cup — young talents were launched to international fame, and established players had their names crystallized on the world stage. The world’s biggest soccer tournament gives players a chance to shine outside the club-level paradigm of consistency and — apart from the English Premier League — a largely domestic audience. On the back of a few impressive performances, players like CSKA Moscow’s Aleksandr Golovin, one of the key players in Russia’s run to the quarterfinals, can earn themselves the chance to move to one of Europe’s top clubs, even if this recruitment trend is less common than it once was.
Using FiveThirtyEight’s World Cup Doppelganger tool, which analyzes the statistical footprint of every player to feature in the world’s biggest tournament since 1966, we can compare the breakout talents of 2018 to their historical counterparts:
Kylian Mbappé’s talent has been known by soccer’s inner sanctum for the best part of a decade: Europe’s biggest clubs have been circling like sharks since he was just 10 years old. While his performance in this tournament, culminating in being crowned the tournament’s best young player, may come as no surprise to those who knew of him, this summer’s World Cup has turned the French speedster into a global phenomenon.
Mbappé’s electric ability to create space and dribble progressively defines his output from the tournament, making his closest historical analogue the 1998 World Cup performance by Denmark’s Brian Laudrup, who was a similarly dazzling dribbler. In Russia, Mbappe thrived on the counterattack for France while playing at right wing, but he may yet transition to a role in the center of the field. If that happens, the predictions of many that he is heir apparent to Thierry Henry may well bear fruit.