Oh, Kylian, Kylian, Kylian, what have you done? France has been already showing signs of going tout Tiananmen the last few weeks, and you score one against AC Jinping XI?

Considering Harry Kane won the men's Ballon d'Or last week, the biggest footballing news was bound to come from something that has nothing to do with football. But to tweak Marxist historian CLR James' famous question in his 1963 book, Beyond a Boundary, 'What do they know of football who only football know?' In this case, Kylian Mbappe's lack of knowledge of how the People's Republic was likely to react to him cracking a Mao-related joke may have tipped things over the don't-cross-this-bar crossbar.

To be fair to Kylian, the incident happened months ago in April. In a video clip, he's in a dressing room before engaging with a convivial panel of fellow footballers on the French TV show, The Bridge. The Real Madrid-France forward is asked, among other questions, what his favourite meme that uses his face is.

After thinking for a longue-ish duree, Mbappe replies, 'The one where they put my face on a Chinese dictator... That really makes me laugh, I use it with my friends all the time.'

Mbappe's face, superimposed on to a classic communist propaganda poster-style image of a torso in a grey Mao jacket, is then shown. If there was any doubt about the identity of the mash-up, it's obvious by the hairstyle - balding in the middle and symmetrically framing the sides like two hot baos: it's Maobappe!

To reiterate, this comment and image popped up in April, when the 4th arrondissement had a spring in the air that was not anarchic, but genuinely printemps, and Paris was not yet the Beirut of the West. But then, six months later, Ballon d'Or politics kicked in.

An Englishman playing in a German club getting the most coveted individual football award in the post-Messi era? Merde! It was a matter of time before gloating anti-Mbappeists would manifest themselves - by digging up an old throwaway remark by Kylian on 'a Chinese dictator'.

Now, whichever side of the dimagi CPI (Maoist) spectrum you may be on, Mbappe's quip was actually quite smart. He earned the ironic moniker of 'Le dictateur' and 'Mobutu' (referencing Zaire's former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko) for his perceived control freakery over team decisions, transfers, and contracts at his old club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and French national team. So, a meme of a 'double-dictator' is quite funny, which sportingly Mbappe thought so too.

But Kylian, Kylian, Kylian. Of all the Bei-jing joints, in all the towns, in all the world, you had to walk into Mao's? Within hours of Mbappe's comment the Maobappe meme resurfacing, condemnation from football fans from the ultimate Mai-Baape state has been brutal. Not only has he been dropped by Chinese brands - 'Our company firmly opposes and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour that offends national sentiments,' read the statement of beverage giant Dongpeng - but China's state television also suspended La Liga from its schedule.

With billions - euros, not Chinese - at stake, on Tuesday, Mbappe apologised: 'My comment was ill-judged, and I now understand that it hurt many people in China.' As did La Liga, which stated it 'deeply regrets the offence that Kylian Mbappe's recent comments have caused among Chinese fans.' What the feng shui?!

Without getting into the cons of Mao's Great Leap Forward, an offside that cost 30-40 mn Chinese lives from the man-made famine that followed, or purges during the Cultural Revolution, or his 'Laogai' labour camps, it's astounding that the world's current top footballer (shut it, Harry Kane) had to apologise for calling a wok a wok - even if this wok isn't considered a wok by the Chinese.

That, as you must be thinking with me, is simply unthinkable in India, where despite a high court injunction last week barring the availability of a documentary, 'The Friendship Files,' which depicts two current esteemed leaders in unflattering light, is freely available for those interested. You see, Kylian, China's chowmein is not our chowmein either.