6 min readNew JerseyUpdated: Jun 17, 2026 07:03 AM IST For just three seconds, Kylian Mbappe suspended his own memory of the game. Of his sufferings of the day, of his seeming detachment to the game, of the feeling of a stranger trapped in his shirt. Then the instincts kicked in, the muscle memory honed to robotic precision took over. When the superlative Micahel Olise stitched a pass into his side, he swayed and opened his body, carving space for his right foot to come around the ball, and struck it diagonally into the nets, past the lunging Senegal goalkeeper Eduoard Mendy. The goal, in the 66th minute, was the moment of Mbappe’s salvation. And France’s. The exact moment when an imposter became the original. It’s the sign of greatness, to be amnesic to the travails of the day, not be tormented by the past, to not let the evening fade into disillusionment, and to lift himself and his country at the ripest moment. His own mood changed, from petulance to rapturing. The celebrations were …