The forward has finally confirmed that he’s leaving Parc des Princes this summer, thus bringing a long overdue end to the drama
Not long after the news first broke that Kylian Mbappe had confirmed his intention to leave Paris Saint-Germain at the end of the season, Aurelien Tchouameni dropped a social media post featuring nothing but a couple of popcorn emojis. No words were necessary.
The message was as clear as it was concise: Tchouameni can’t wait to see what happens next in the football world’s longest-running soap opera. The midfielder’s excitement is perfectly understandable, of course. Mbappe will soon be joining him at Real Madrid.
It’s long been the worst-kept secret in football, of course, inevitable for about six months at this stage, and arguably probable ever since Mbappe first burst onto the scene as a teenager at Monaco. Because the Frenchman has wanted to move to Madrid since he was a kid. His upcoming free transfer is, thus, the realisation of a dream. For PSG, though, it’s the end of a nightmare.
Colossal damage done
The French champions may actually end up getting some sort of financial compensation – Mbappe may give up certain bonuses owed to him or even hand over his signing-on fee to PSG – but the club is set to pay an incredibly heavy price for losing the best player in the world in terms of sponsorship deals, commercial opportunities and social media followers.
Even when both Neymar and Lionel Messi were on the books, Mbappe was still PSG’s most valuable player in every sense. He wasn’t just one of the game’s great talents, he was a homegrown hero. In their ideal world, the boy from Bondy would have led PSG to a first Champions League title. But this Parisian fairy tale has long since descended into farce.
PSG promise playing time
Madrid’s interest in Mbappe – and vice versa – has been long standing. Los Blancos first invited the kid with the posters of Cristiano Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane on his bedroom wall to the club’s training ground in 2012. Madrid also agreed a deal with Monaco to sign Mbappe in the summer of 2017, only for the teenage sensation to surprisingly plump for PSG instead.
“It wasn’t just about money,” Luis Ferrer, who was part of PSG’s recruitment team for 10 years, told GOAL. “It was totally different, it took time, months and months. He had just had an amazing campaign with Monaco and everyone knew he was a jewel, but we also knew he was Madrid’s priority.
“So, Madrid were there and there was no way to stop that. [Madrid was Mbappe’s dream too] – that’s why we knew there was a lot of work to do.
“We had to think of brilliant ideas. Everyone collaborated to make it work. But my idea was to tell Mbappe to join PSG first, that the (2018) World Cup was coming, and offer him a guaranteed spot in the starting XI that perhaps Madrid could not promise him.
“We made that promise because we believed in his talent. It’s something very rare, I’ve only ever promised a footballer once that they would definitely play. Normally it’s the coach who does that, but because [former PSG boss] Unai [Emery] was involved in the talks…”
Indeed, Emery played a pivotal role in convincing Mbappe and his parents that PSG was the best option for him at that stage of his career.
‘Write history in my city’
The idea of returning to Paris also appealed enormously to Mbappe, though. “I’ve always said that I wanted to write history in France, in the capital, in my country, in my city,” he told Canal+. It would certainly be difficult to underplay the importance of Mbappe’s upbringing in Bondy on his entire worldview.
“I think that football is just different for us. It is essential,” he wrote in the Players’ Tribune. “It is every day. It is like bread and water… In Bondy, you learn values that go beyond football. You learn to treat everyone the same, because you’re all in the same pot. You all dream the same dream.”
Consequently, he returned to Bondy after being officially unveiled as a PSG player in September 2017 to meet and greet the next generation of kids dreaming of following in his footsteps.
The event may have been organised by Mbappe’s primary sponsor, Nike, but it was also hugely beneficial from PSG’s perspective. Bondy was just one particularly productive banlieue in one of the best breeding grounds for footballing talent in the entire world. So, having Mbappe as the poster boy was priceless PR for PSG.
‘Came for collective accomplishments’
Of course, Mbappe also delivered on the field. He is just about to be confirmed as Ligue 1’s top scorer for the sixth consecutive season and has already usurped Edinson Cavani as the most prolific player in PSG’s history.
However, as Mbappe pointedly stated at the time, “It’s a personal accomplishment, but I also came for collective accomplishments” – and, by that stage, Mbappe’s dissatisfaction with PSG’s progress and inability to challenge consistently for the Champions League was obvious.
He had looked set to leave on a free transfer for the first time in 2022. Madrid were convinced that they had finally got their man, but Mbappe performed a dramatic U-turn by electing to stay in Paris after being promised even more money and even more power.
PSG denied making Mbappe a de facto sporting director but Nasser Al-Khelaifi said he would be “the cornerstone of the club’s project”. That particular project is now on the verge of collapse – which may not be such a bad thing, as it would allow the club to move on from Mbappe but also its unhealthy obsession with superstars.
‘It is not Kylian Saint-Germain’
During a dispute with the club over image rights, Mbappe once memorably stated that while PSG was “a big family, it is certainly not Kylian Saint-Germain”. But it’s felt like that over the past couple of years. Mbappe has become bigger than the club – and they knew it too, which is why they have repeatedly bent over backwards to meet his every demand.
Their patience finally appeared to run out last year, when a letter confirming his intention to leave the club in 2024 was mysteriously – and conveniently – leaked to the press. Mbappe was excluded from a pre-season tour of Asia but ultimately welcomed back into the fold after “very constructive, positive talks” between the two parties.
Mbappe responded to the spat in predictably prolific fashion, scoring 44 goals in just 47 appearances in all competitions this season. However, it emerged before the Champions League last-16 clash with Real Sociedad that he had just told Al-Khelaifi that he would be leaving PSG this summer.
The immediate reaction was obviously devastation. The club had managed to convince Mbappe to stay put before; they hoped to do so again. But Mbappe’s mind was made up and, once they get over the loss, it should prove a blessing in disguise for PSG. Because this soap opera has gone on far too long.
‘PSG existed before Mbappe’
The constant controversy has done nothing but damage PSG’s attempts to convince the world that they are a serious club. At one point, he even argued that his achievements have been undervalued because he plays for PSG, “a divisive club” that “attracts gossip”.
Mbappe obviously has legitimate gripes with the way in which PSG has been run over the years, but the irony of him being responsible for so much of the incessant and distracting tabloid talk with his non-stop flirting with Madrid, on-pitch petulance and criticism of his own coach is apparently lost on him. As Jerome Rothen once said, Mbappe “makes too much noise”, portraying him as the kind of character that would react to a fire by “pouring petrol on it”, while Christophe Dugarry predicted all the way back in 2019 that the Mbappe-PSG love affair would “quickly turn bad”.
His exit is going to hit hard, there is absolutely no doubt about that, but as former sporting director Leonardo pointed out, it’s hard to build a successful team around such a fickle figure. “For the good of PSG, I think the time has come for Mbappe to go, no matter what,” Leonardo told L’Equipe last year. “Paris-Saint-Germain existed before Kylian Mbappe and it will exist after him.”
So, while this may not be the ending PSG wanted, at least it’s finally ending.