About

Kylian Mbappe's "I Will Be There No Matter What" is a catchphrase said by soccer / football player Kylian Mbappé in 2020. The quote, uttered in an interview when asked about his future goals, became a meme after fans thought that he was going back on his word. In 2023, the quote saw a resurgence in memes in which the original catchphrase and headline were used as an exploitable within sports to signal a player's intent to do something with certainty, among other edits.

Origin

While Kylian Mbappé was playing with the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) football club in 2020, he was asked about where he would be playing in the following year, as it was hotly debated if he was planning on switching teams or not. Mbappé then stated in an interview that he was going to continue with PSG, saying, "I will be there no matter what" in a bid to calm fan speculation. This quote was then uploaded to X by the official sports media account of Bleacher Report, @brfootball,^[1] stating that Mbappé wasn't going anywhere (shown below).

Spread

The quote would see little use over the next few years, as Kylian Mbappé did continue to play with the PSG team. At the end of 2022, however, the catchphrase and headline resurfaced as a reference in a meme about soccer player Karim Benzema. On November 26th, 2022, the X account @lilmeekbfg^[2] uploaded the phrase as the opener to a joke about Benzema and a perceived attraction to the daughter of fellow player Luis Suarez, stating that he would be attending Suarez's daughter's Quinceanera. The meme received over 300 likes in roughly one year (shown below).

Usage of the catchphrase and style of the pull quote headline as a meme format continued to rise entering 2023, with it seeing more frequency month after month. On July 30th, 2023, a non-sports related use for the meme was posted by Redditor u/SabbathDiscovery,^[3] who used the phrase in the context of organic chemistry and always having impurities in the final result despite undergoing recrystallization five times in an attempt to purify it. The meme garnered over 300 upvotes in three months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References