sport news Kylian Mbappe is out to make French toast of England in their World Cup ... trends now

The maroon door opens to reveal a scene of grinding hardship. One that typifies the existence of migrant families mired in 'les banlieues' — the grim city suburbs that stand testimony to the fractures in French society.

Though the woman who greets me is wearing a striking African dress and a resolute smile, she is clearly struggling to contain four of her six boisterous children in the tiny council flat, with a bedsit lounge, grease-stained kitchenette and just two bedrooms.

Consigned to this second-floor shoebox, in a tower-block in Bondy, on the northern outskirts of Paris, she and her family have modest aspirations: a bigger house, better food, decently paid jobs.

Poignantly, one of the boys says he hopes to drive a dustbin wagon when he grows up.

The incomers who were housed here before them, Wilfried Mbappe Lottin, who arrived from Cameroon, and his wife Fayza Lamari, who came from Algeria, had an altogether loftier goal.

From the moment their toddler son, Kylian, began kicking a football around the flat ('the constant bouncing noise on my ceiling drove me half crazy,' laughs a woman from Martinique who still lives below) they could see he had a preternatural gift for the game.

Indeed, he was so precociously talented that, even then, they began planning in earnest for the glittering career that surely awaited him when he achieved greatness.

They proved sound judges. During this World Cup, Kylian Mbappe has been hailed as the greatest player on the planet, usurping Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, whose powers are fading with age.

And if England are to progress beyond the quarter-final tonight, they will somehow have to contain the 23-year-old Frenchman's astounding skill, speed and power.

Down the long, disillusioning years since 1966, England's yeoman footballers have seen their World Cup hopes flounder at the feet of various geniuses. Maradona and Pele, to name but two.

Mbappe threatens to be their latest nemesis. To say he's fast is rather like saying that nuclear missiles can be combustible. This man doesn't just sprint, he positively explodes leaving defenders flailing in his slipstream.

After vainly trying to keep pace with him in the last round of the tournament, Aston Villa's Polish defender Matty Cash admitted that his 'legs burned' with pain.

In France, Mbappe is seldom out of the headlines. Recent stories have included his dalliance with a transgender Playboy model, and his eyewatering new three-year contract with Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain, reportedly worth £547 million (he agreed to sign only after President Macron pleaded with him to stay loyal to France and reject a similarly vast deal offered by Real Madrid).

Here in England, however, the new king of football remains largely unknown. So, this week, I went into the Parisian suburbs to trace his extraordinary rise and find out what kind of man we are up against.

Uplifting, intriguing, yet laced with controversy — more of which later — his story has more twists and turns than one of his mesmerising dribbles. It all begins in Bondy. The last time I was here, in 2005, the town was embroiled in the worst civil riots France has seen since the War.

Chased by the police, two French-African youths had been electrocuted when trying to hide in a sub-station, and in retaliation cars were set ablaze and buildings sacked. Whether or not Mbappe, then six years old, was scarred by these terrifying events, his family's flat was perilously close to the flashpoints.

It stands in a street whose drabness makes a mockery of its name, which translates as Lilac Alley.

Like the present incumbents, his parents migrated from Africa to find work.

His father became a coach with the local football club, AS Bondy.

His mother, Fayza Lamari, is said to have cooked school meals, but also played professional handball and later trained as a lawyer so she could take charge of her son's complex business affairs.

This week, as the first journalist to be invited inside the apartment where they raised Kylian, his brother Ethan, and an adoptive son, Jires Kembo Ekoko (both also footballers), I gained a fascinating insight into their tough beginnings.

The family moved out 11 years ago, yet their nameplate remains beside the security intercom. The featureless, concrete block has no lifts; you must climb a narrow, winding staircase surrounded by an iron grille.

Because it's so small, the smell of food permeates all the rooms; the furniture is sparse; the only view comes from a small kitchen window overlooking AS Bondy's football pitches.

As the Boy from the Banlieues grew up, it was there that his precocious talent was nurtured.

By sitting in on his father's coaching sessions, he quickly learned the finer points of the game, but neighbours say it was his fiercely ambitious and attentive mother who really spurred him to greatness.

It certainly paid off. Today, Mbappe reclines in a £5.5 million penthouse apartment with a jacuzzi and stunning rooftop terrace, in Paris's swanky 16th arrondissement. His boyhood apartment would probably fit inside its home-cinema.

Though he is often held up as a symbol of hope for the residents of Bondy — and has done much to better their lot, such as paying for children to have eyesight tests and spectacles, handing out free tickets to his matches, and funding new sporting facilities — his success is not celebrated by everyone.

'Yes, it's very nice to live in Kylian Mbappe's flat,' says Sedu Toure, 42, a Mali-born restaurant worker who is father to the six children.

'But I am a bit sad that he has never once come to say 'Hello'. My sons (Isoumaila, 11, and Samu, nine) are both mad keen on football, and they are promising strikers who play for AS Bondy, like he did. I would love to see him come and give them some encouragement.'

The two boys, who plan to watch tonight's game on the family's one evident luxury — a widescreen TV that dominates the living-room — don't even have their own football.

That is not to say Mbappe doesn't return to his roots. Momentarily departing a kickabout in one of Bondy's many street-soccer courts, Anise Mehtal, 13, took out his mobile phone and showed me a selfie he had taken with

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