Frank Lampard described N’Golo Kante as the “best central midfield player in the world” back in March 2017 after the Frenchman’s stunning performances during his debut season at Chelsea.Fifteen months later, and just one week after Kante helped France lift the World Cup, a lot more football fans will concur with Lampard’s assessment.It’s no coincidence that Kante has enjoyed remarkable success over the past three seasons.He won the league with Leicester City in 2016 - it still feels bizarre typing that out - and then lifted the Premier League trophy with Chelsea 12 months later after completing a £32 million move.Kante also picked up the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award during his first season at Stamford Bridge. Everything he touched turned to gold.Last season, meanwhile, he helped Chelsea win the FA Cup. But that triumph pales in comparison to winning the World Cup with Les Bleus last week.Kante is now a national hero in France - but what’s fantastic about the 27-year-old is that this latest success won’t have any effect on his personality.

Success hasn't changed Kante

He’ll still be the same humble, down-to-earth guy who drives his £20,000 Mini Cooper to training every week and is always smiling.

Is there a more universally popular football on the planet right now? Probably not. Surely nobody has a bad word to say about the 5ft 6in maestro.

What’s remarkable is that very few football fans - especially here in the UK - were even aware of Kante prior to his move to Leicester in August 2015.

There was little fanfare when Kante, then 24, signed for £5.6 million - but little did Leicester fans know they’d just secured the services of a future world champion.

Throwback to when Sky used FM stats to judge Kante

So little was known about Kante three summers ago, in fact, that Sky Sports used statistics from the popular computer game Football Manager (FM) to judge Leicester’s new signing.

Sky were panned for this on social media at the time but were the stats accurate? Let’s take a closer look…

The screenshot from the Sky studio shows Kante had 13/20 for dribbling, 17 for acceleration, 14 for technique and 18 for work rate.

In all honesty, those FM stats don’t look too wide of the mark - although obviously he deserved 20/20 for work rate. Few players in world football work harder or cover more ground than Chelsea’s No. 7.

And here are Kante’s statistics in full from FM2015…

Tackling, 11? What? Concentration, 9? Positioning, 12? Stamina, 14?

Those stats look pretty shocking now.

Check out his value at the time, too. Less than half-a-million pounds. Madness.

Let’s hope Sky don’t use a computer game to judge other relatively unknown players in future.