hard to argue with that.His stats and his impact on the game. A 19 year old Mbappe had a greater influence on a world cup match than a maybe barely past his prime Messi across from him. CR7 definitely was a show pony. We're talking about what they were as players at 19. Mbappe is a legitimate Player of the Year candidate and was the most dangerous player in the tournament for the World Cup winner at 19 years old. There is no amount of gymnastics one can do to claim Messi was better at that age. It can't be done. We all know what Messi became and it's presumptuous to assume Mbappe will do the same but he's better now than Messi was then, full stop. And Dembele has had a couple of good games to start a season. He was injured and did absolutely nothing last year. He's shown nowhere near as much as Mbappe is and rightly barely made it off the bench for France because Mbappe is at least a level above him.
Maybe the popular opinion is created because his main weapon right now is to knock the ball around the guy and run. Doesn't need to do anything else really.
We saw CR7 do the same single trick repeatedly in the pl, but the level of competition is way higher.
Messi or Neymar do have a demonstrably higher ability on the ball and this is one of the reasons why these guys have been called for greatness even when they were young