France election campaign starts with Macron facing struggle
"I hope I will still be proud to wear this shirt after July 7," he said.
While some on the right rounded on Mbappe for wading into the controversy, Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera lauded his comments as "exemplary".
Macron's dissolving of parliament after the French far right's victory in the EU vote has undoubtedly redrawn the lines of French politics.
"The aim is to create a new parliamentary majority," former prime minister Edouard Philippe, who leads a party allied to Macron's bloc, told BFMTV.
But perhaps to Macron's surprise, a new left-wing alliance -- the New Popular Front that takes in Socialists, Greens and hard-leftist France Unbowed (LFI) -- has emerged.
On the right, Eric Ciotti, the leader of the Republicans (LR), has agreed an election pact with the RN, provoking fury inside the party and a move by its leadership to dismiss him, which a Paris court blocked on Friday.
The Nice prosecutor's office said it had opened an investigation at the end of May for "misappropriation of public funds" after a complaint against several people including Ciotti, who denounced this as "obvious political manipulation".
In a further twist, the new left-wing alliance has already shown signs of cracking, with the LFI's raucous figurehead Jean-Luc Melenchon too divisive a figure for some to contend for prime minister.
