While the rumors suggest that this might be the year that Real Madrid finally lands the 24-year-old, could there be a way that he rejects the Spanish club for a second time and extends with PSG?
CBS Sports report Jonathan Johnson appeared recently on the PSG Talking podcast and noted what it might take for the Ligue 1 side to hold onto their star players.
“My feeling and the feeling that you get around Paris at this moment in time is that whatever Mbappé’s decision might be in the future, whether that’s staying with PSG, whether that’s going to Real Madrid, whether that’s going somewhere else if another club was to come in and potentially show an interest in taking him on a free transfer, a lot of it is going to depend on what happens with PSG’s Champions League run and how they fare this season,” Johnson said.
“So, get to their most consistent for the knockout phase. Assuming that everything else goes reasonably according to plan in this group stage, then I think PSG can feel that they have a good shot at convincing Mbappé to stay.”
The French giants finally put Mbappé at the center of their project after the exits of Lionel Messi and Neymar Jr. However, is this enough to convince him that the capital club is heading in the right direction?
PSG moved off their superstars this past summer and committed to building a team rather than bringing in players because of their name recognition.
With the French superstar emerging largely unscathed from a contract stand-off with the Paris club, he appears to have his destiny in his hands. The saga may end in January, when potential free agents can sign pre-contracts with new clubs. But matters are still far from straightforward
Kylian Mbappe first caught Real Madrid’s attention when he was just 13.
Zinedine Zidane, Madrid’s sporting director at the time, heard accounts of the prodigy and wanted to check if the hype was real. “My father received a call from someone at Real Madrid, inviting me to Spain for a training session,” Mbappe told The Players’ Tribune. “It was a shock because they actually told my father, ‘Zidane would like to see your son.’”