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The Players Are Doing It for Themselves, Not Us

David Ramos/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Kylian Mbappé’s smile was real. His Paris St.-Germain teammates had gathered in a circle around him, bouncing and dancing and celebrating their progression to the club’s first Champions League final.

Their numbers kept swelling as stragglers and latecomers, those who had been sidetracked by media commitments or had to make their way down from the stands, arrived. Abdou Diallo has been in Lisbon as a spectator thus far; he had not played a minute of either of P.