Football is likened to a man’s sport, but the sport’s most powerful men are reeling from Lamari – Mbappe’s mother.

Like every teenage boy, Kylian Mbappe came home one day and told his mother what his new teammate was doing. Mbappe has just started training at Monaco’s first team, the big brothers get their shoes cleaned at the end of each day. Mbappe told his mother about what he had seen. He said that now that he is a first team player, he doesn’t need to clean his shoes anymore. She listens to understand. And she made her son continue to polish his own shoes.

If Mbappe is the most powerful player at the moment, a super striker that makes every powerful and richest team on the planet wait in line for negotiations, then Fayza Lamari, his mother, is considered a tough negotiator. best in the world of football. With Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, most of the top teams in the Premier League and rich men from Saudi Arabia hunting for his son’s signature, Lamari is the most sought-after agent in the transfer market.

But she is not an official representative. On paper, at least. She is not a lawyer or an accountant. She doesn’t even care too much about football. “I work for him,” 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 Spanish Royal team is convinced that they are about to successfully recruit the star they have been chasing for a decade. The first is Lamari, in charge of the son’s commercial management. Mr. Wilfried, Mbappe’s father, has technical responsibility. And finally Delphine Verheyden, the lawyer in charge of legal affairs has worked for the French striker since 2015.

Lamari and Wilfried no longer live together, but have always maintained a friendly relationship. When Mbappe was young, when he was a student at AS Bondy, the training camp was located on the outskirts of Paris and then moved to Monaco, Wilfied was the most influential person. 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.

At first, Lamari struggled with 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 government and Wilfried was a football coach. Her family is not used to money. When money and fame suddenly came along with Mbappe’s on-field boom in 2018, at the age of 17, Lamari gained 24kg due to stress. When Mbappe turned down Real Madrid to join PSG in a deal worth up to 180 million euros, Lamari was really overwhelmed by the huge amount. “For three years, we dared not touch the money,” she said. “We have poor man syndrome. I fear that one day they will come to wake me up and give me my money back.”

But then she gradually adapted to her new life, began to show her determination and fight. She calls it the “Kabyle face” in her, with a tenacious, even obstinate personality that she believes inherited from her parents. That quality was shown by Mrs. Lamari at the age of 20, when she was a handball player of AS Bondy in the French league. “On the court, Lamari is a fighter and also very hot-tempered,” Jean-Louis Kimmoun, former AS Bondy coach described in Le Parisien in 2017. “Don’t provoke Lamari, she is not always friendly.”

As the criticisms and controversial topics surrounding Mbappe became increasingly fierce, Lamari found herself having to speak up to protect her son. She argued with Veronique Rabiot, Adrien Rabiot’s mother, when Veronique accused Mbappe of being too arrogant after France’s defeat to Switzerland at Euro 2020. She expressed dissatisfaction with Neymar and Dani Alves, two seniors of Mbappe at PSG for often making fun of her son’s appearance. In April, she defended Mbappe again after the striker publicly criticized PSG for using his image in a ticket advertising clip. “PSG is not Kylian Saint-Germain,” the player wrote.

Lamari not only protects Mbappe, she also negotiates for her son. 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 show. They want Mbappe to be the perfect role model both on and off the pitch, a sportsman committed to lofty goals and bringing about positive change. Michael Jordan is the example Mbappe’s family follows. Lamari organized a pilgrimage back to Cameroon last month, when Mbappe played with 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren in Djebale, the village his father grew up in. In talks with Real last year, Lamari and Verheyden insisted that full 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 at being rejected by the French striker, while PSG’s victory was short-lived.

Mbappe’s new deal in Paris includes a 100-million-euro golden handshake and a 50-million-euro salary, but no long-term deal. The contract is only for two years, with the option of a one-year extension 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 the striker informed PSG about not continuing to stick with this team after the second year of the contract. In terms of maximizing value while staying in control, the deal is groundbreaking.

If Mbappe had done it his mother’s way, things might have been different. Mrs. Lamari accepted her and Verheyden encouraged Mbappe to join Real Madrid while Mr. Wilfried wanted his son to stay at PSG. But Lamari insists that the final decision always belongs to Mbappe, which this player always emphasizes. “We discussed everything, but they never objected to my decision and never imposed it, since 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥hood,” Mbappe said. “My parents always explain to me which decision is best and if I make the wrong choice, I have to take responsibility like a man.”

However, Lamari’s influence on Mbappe made many people uncomfortable. The agent of Ferland Mendy, a Real Madrid defender and Mbappe’s teammate in the French team, thinks that Lamari’s influence scares Mbappe away from 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 lawyer, agent and coach,” commented the Swedish legend. “Who do they think they are? They should keep their mouths shut. His future depends on him, as a professional player.”

Lamari’s critics are often male, the dominant power in football. Jorge Messi has been an agent for 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 the fact that Lamari’s total mental focus was on his son was an advantage. She is completely independent from all influences, unlike agents or so-called super-relationship agents. That was Lamari’s leverage in negotiations. She does not have to maintain personal relationships, only focusing 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 surrogate but is performing the duties of a mother. Just like when young Mbappe complained to his mother about the big brothers in Monaco being served to clean his shoes, Lamari sees it as a mother’s duty to keep her son from becoming complacent. She scolded Mbappe when experts mouth-reading showed that her son was criticizing his teammates. She dismissed all of Mbappe’s complaints when the striker turned down unsuitable sponsors. They talked to each other 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 a battle my war!