REAL MADRID
Who is Fayza Lamari? This is Mbappé's mother and manager
Here’s all you need to know on Fayza Lamari, the woman behind the new Real Madrid player.
Real Madrid have announced the signing of Kylian Mbappé on a free transfer. The news will undoubtedly flood the news cycle regarding the star of the game, but we’re here to take a look at Fayza Lamari, one of the influential figures behind that of Mbappé.
Lamari is Kylian Mbappé mother and also his agent. She has been there since the beginning, guiding Mbappé through contract negotiations and the general world of elite football, where things can get quite cut-throat quite quickly.
She has manoeuvred him as he has progressed throughout his life in the professional game, organising the deal to bring him from Monaco to PSG, the subsequent contract renewals in the capital, and of course, his move to Spain.
The 50-year-old was born in Bondy on the outskirts of Paris, but her parents were part of a Berber ethnic group in the Kabylia region of northern Algeria. A former handball player with AS Bondy and the French national handball team in the late 1990s and early 2000s, she hung up her boots and transitioned into the world of sport business. Lamari eventually began acting as her son’s agent and consequently becoming one of the most powerful voices behind the scenes.
Mbappé's mother has a reputation as a formidable negotiator, and was the person in charge of diffusing the bomb when Mbappé said back in 2021 that he wanted to leave PSG. “His dad wanted him to stay, and the lawyer and I wanted him to leave,” she calmly explained to Le Parisien. “(But) none of us three decide. When Kylian wants something, you can (try to) do whatever you want. (But) he will do it.”
The Athletic say she takes “an uncompromising approach to contract negotiations, trying to outmanoeuvre men as powerful as PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi and Madrid president Florentino Perez”
Fayza got married to Wilfried Mbappé, a French-Cameroonian football coach and agent, in 1997. Together the pair had both Kylian and Ethan Mbappé, and also became adoptive parents of Jirès Kembo Ekoko. At times, the duties have been shared between the parents, with his father Wilfried taking care of the football side and his mother the commercial side. According to The Athletic, the couple are now separated, although they remain on good terms.