Jires Kembo Ekoko: The Adopted Brother Who Taught Mbappe his fake shot special

Among the most lethal weapons in modern football is Kylian Mbappé’s signature feinte de frappe—the fake shot that has sent elite defenders flying across three World Cups. But that move did not originate in Monaco’s academy or PSG’s training ground. It originated in a living room in Bondy, passed down from an elder brother who served as the original blueprint for the Mbappé family.

Before Kylian became a global brand, Jirès Kembo Ekoko was the family’s first professional footballer. Taken in by Wilfrid Mbappé and Fayza Lamari at age 11, he was ten years older than Kylian. For Kylian, there is no memory of a household without him: Jirès was not a late addition to the family, but the very first chapter of the Mbappé story.

The Technical Inheritance: Passing Down the Feinte de Frappe

The signature fake shot is a direct family inheritance. The mechanics of the move were first passed from Wilfrid Mbappé to Jirès during his formative years. As Kylian grew up watching Jirès star for INF Clairefontaine, Stade Rennais in Ligue 1, and the French Under-21 national team, he obsessively studied and absorbed his older brother’s technique.

Jirès was also the first to spot what the rest of the world would take a decade to realize. Long before scouts and European giants took notice, Jirès was already telling his professional teammates at Rennes about a kid in Bondy who possessed an unheard-of football IQ and a devastating fake shot.

The “Beta Test” for the Mbappé Business Empire

Jirès’s career served a purpose far greater than his own goal tally: it was the family’s real-world beta test.

Through managing Jirès’s career—navigating agent relationships, club dynamics, and contract negotiations across French football—Wilfrid and Fayza gained a decade of hands-on education. They learned every trap, clause, and commercial flaw in professional football contracts before Kylian’s talent ever attracted global scrutiny.

The unprecedented financial architecture of Kylian’s career—culminating in his Real Madrid deal featuring a €150M signing bonus and 80% image rights retention—was not built on a whim. It was built on the hard-earned lessons learned during Jirès’s decade in Ligue 1.

Written Into the Foundation: The KEWJF Corporate Legacy

Jirès’s role was never informal or marginal. When the family established a holding company in 2017 to manage Kylian’s commercial rights, they named it KEWJF:

• Kylian
• Ethan
• Wilfrid
• Jirès
• Fayza

While that entity has since evolved into Interconnected Ventures (the umbrella holding behind Coalition Capital), the original naming decision stands as permanent proof of his status. Jirès was written into the legal architecture from day one—not just as the brother who taught Kylian his signature fake shot, but as the foundational pillar upon which the entire Mbappé empire was tested and built.