France will play a World Cup qualifying match against Ukraine at the Stade de France tomorrow (20:45 CET, 19:45 BST), on the day that commemorates ten years from the deadly terrorist attacks of November 13, 2015, in Paris. The coordinated attacks started at the Stade de France, where three suicide bombers detonated bombs outside of the stadium, killing one person. They failed to enter the stadium, where they planned to cause a much bigger massacre during a friendly football match between France and Germany, attended by then president François Hollande.
Kylian Mbappé, captain of the team, spoke in a press conference before the match and remembered the tragic day, saying they will try to pay tribute to the victims. "On behalf of the entire French team, the staff, the players, and everyone involved, as I don't know if everyone will have the opportunity to speak about it on Thursday, everyone knows that tomorrow is a special day, not in a good way, so we wanted to express our thoughts for all those who have lost loved ones, who may have been injured or affected mentally or physically", Mbappé said.
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"We want to make the French understand that although there's a World Cup qualifier underway, there are much more important things. And commemorating this unfortunately historic day is one of them. We're not disconnected from that, and we wanted to express our thoughts for all the French people".
The 26-year-old striker remembered that he was in Monaco when it happened, and got the news like everybody else, and said he felt fear about his parents, who were living in Bondy. Still a teenager, Mbappé didn't make his first team debut until 2017, the same year he got a record breaking transfer to PSG.
The French manager, Didier Deschamps, was also on the bench that day. Only one player from the squad from ten years ago will also be in the squad tomorrow, full back Lucas Digne. If France wins the match, they will qualify for World Cup, but as the captain Mbappé remembered, there are more important things than football.