Project Mbappe

Submission 18,271

Part of a series on Kylian Mbappé. [View Related Entries]

About

Project Mbappe is a slang term referring to the act of rigorously training your child in soccer or football so they can grow up to be the next Kylian Mbappe (a French professional footballer), essentially living vicariously through your child to turn them into a soccer star. Memes about putting your child through Project Mbappe began spreading online as early as 2018, seeing a peak in virality in mid-2020 when users began pairing funny videos of child soccer fails with the term. The meme saw a resurgence again in mid-2022.

Origin

It is unclear where the idea of Project Mbappe first began. The earliest known related use of the term "Project Mbappe" was posted by Twitter^[1] user @basicakh on October 7th, 2018, who wrote, "Forget project Mbappe. Project Khabib is where it’s at." The term then continued to spread in 2019. For example, on August 21st, 2019, Twitter^[2] user @jbandzinoo posted a video of someone making their baby kick, writing, "Me starting up Project Mbappe as soon as my son is born," garnering over 770 likes and 200 retweets in three years (shown below).

On May 24th, 2020, Urban Dictionary^[3] user thfcJak defined the term, receiving over 255 likes in roughly two years (seen below).

The sole objective for a parent (mainly a father to a son) to live vicariously through their child into making them a footballer at the highest professional level. This may involve rigorous training exercises from toddler-hood all the way to adolescence, and taking pride in their first nutmeg during their school tournament.

Spread

The term saw a peak in interest in 2020 as people began making memes about putting children through Project Mbappe. On August 24th, 2020, Twitter^[4] user @sgubhusomkhonto posted a meme about starting Project Mbappe from the womb, garnering over 200 likes and 130 retweets in two years. On September 1st and 2nd, Sporting News^[5] and Archy Sport^[6] published articles about the meme, sharing several tweets referencing it. On November 20th, Twitter^[7] user @milton_mathala posted a video of a man making his baby run, captioned, "project mbappe," garnering over 54,000 likes and 14,000 retweets in two years (shown below).

On July 26th, 2022, TikToker^[8] @raisingzion1 posted a video where he shows his baby, Zion, lying on the floor wearing oversized soccer cleats, claiming to be starting him on Project Mbappe, garnering over 37.2 million views in two months (shown below, left). He continued to post videos showing Zion's process of going through Project Mbappe over the following months. On July 29th, he posted a video to TikTok^[9] training Zion, garnering over 2.7 million views in two months (shown below, right).

On September 2nd, Twitter^[10] user @percocot30 posted a meme about how their son has to get with a transgender woman to complete Project Mbappe, referencing Mbappe allegedly dating a transgender model^[11], garnering over 500 likes in six days. On September 5th, TikToker^[12] @raisingzion1 posted another video of Zion going through Project Mbappe, wearing an oversized suit, garnering over 19 million views in three days (shown below). The video was reposted to Twitter^[13] on September 5th, garnering over 65,000 likes in three days.