Kylian Mbappé is, from this January 1 at 00:00 hours, free to sign a new contract with whoever he wants. The French star ends his relationship with his current club, PSG, in six months (on June 30, 2022) and FIFA regulations now allow you to have conversations with other teams without either party breaking the rule. For the first time since signing for the Parisians in 2017, the forward is master of his destiny. Neither the sheikh nor Leonardo can take action on the matter anymore, because the decision is solely in the hands of the player.
The soap opera has reached exactly the point that Madrid drew some years ago. It was like this because Leonardo, PSG sports director, slipped in circles of football people who would not accept any offer for Mbappé. The sports director was always firm in his position: he preferred to let him go free rather than transferred, no matter how high the offer was. The white leaders sensed from the first moment that this was not a bluff. Suspicions that ended up being confirmed last summer, when PSG rejected an offer from Madrid of 200 million euros (even above its market value) for a player who finished his contract in a few months.
That movement was understood by Madrid as necessary, a debt they had with the footballer for having remained firm time and again in his position of not accepting any renewal offer from the French team, despite the fact that there have been very juicy ones. The forward also fulfilled his part during the summer, as he himself has assured in several interviews, by asking PSG to leave in the last summer market for Madrid. All the actors moved the chips except one: the Parisians. The threat that Leonardo had made for so long, that of not accepting any offer, was strictly carried out.
Since that August 31, Madrid accelerated the next part of the plan: reassure Mbappé so that he would continue without renewing and sign with the whites when the regulations allowed. The option of trying again in January was never considered, so at the Bernabéu they have received naturally Kylian’s recent statements on CNN (“No, in January I will not go to Madrid,” he said). It is the roadmap …
PSG
The situation, from today, takes a radical turn. Until this moment, PSG always had the upper hand, because the last word was theirs. Now they have nothing to say, beyond a desperate attempt to get Mbappé to accept a renewal offer. An option that is very unlikely because the player was hurt by what happened last summer and he understands that renewing means ceasing to be the owner of his future again. In all this history, plagued with multiple twists and turns, a new episode recently appeared: chance brought them together in the knockout stages of the Champions League. A draw that was also bizarre, because it had to be repeated due to an error by UEFA after the Madridistas had been paired with Benfica and the French with Manchester United in the first one. Those games in no way affect the operation, although they do affect the deadlines, because Mbappé prefers to park it until after the tie. Any movement that is made before those meetings (the first leg is on February 15 and the return on March 9) will be with extreme confidentiality, because if the footballer is clear about something, it is that he wants to leave his current club in an elegant way. He is Parisian, his family and friends live there and for that very reason he wants to be an impeccable professional until the last moment. Nothing would make him happier than leaving with a Champions League under his arm, even if that means leaving his next club, Madrid, on the way.
Stadium
The signing of Mbappé is strategic for Madrid for several reasons. In the first place, as is obvious, the sports, because it is guaranteed to have a footballer who is called to fight for the Ballon d’Or every year for the next decade. On the other hand, also very important, it sends a message to the State-Clubs: not everything is money in football. The prestige of playing for Madrid, the club with the most European Cups in history, continues to weigh heavily on the decisions of footballers. Having Mbappé as the image of the project is essential to show the world the new Santiago Bernabéu, which Real Madrid hopes will be ready by the end of 2022, with Mbappé already in white …