Mbappé sits out France training with flu symptoms

A routine training session in Clairefontaine made headlines for what didn't happen: Kylian Mbappé didn't take the field with the rest of his teammates this Tuesday. The reason, according to the team itself, is a bout of the flu that kept him out of the session.

The French national team gathered on the outskirts of Paris to prepare for its upcoming Nations League matches, and the captain's absence set off alarm bells right as the key week before the first game gets underway.

France visits Turkey this Friday and will then travel to face Belgium the following Monday. Come October, the schedule gets even tougher at home: they'll host Italy on October 2 and Belgium again on October 5. Four matches in less than two weeks, so any physical setback, however minor it may seem, is being watched closely.

For now this is simply a case of the flu, not an injury, something that in principle shouldn't drag on too long. Even so, with so much soccer packed into so little time, the coaching staff isn't willing to take any chances with its star player.

Mbappé remains the team's captain, now playing under new head coach Zinédine Zidane. The Real Madrid forward arrives at this call-up with fresh memories of a big summer: he passed Lionel Messi as the all-time leading scorer in World Cup history, with 22 goals in the competition. He was also a key figure in France's 2018 World Cup triumph.

The question now is whether the forward returns to training in the coming days and is ready in time for the match against Turkey. France, with Zidane in charge for the first time for this kind of official fixture, needs its captain at full strength for a stretch of the calendar that promises to be demanding, both in the Nations League and in the broader push to keep building confidence ahead of what's next.