Real Madrid is still on pole for Kylian Mbappé when the signing of the French star is about to enter its decisive phase.
Florentino Pérez takes the matter personally as it is a strategic signing that will only come together if no mistakes are made. The successful end of the business requires the best diplomacy since the key to hiring is not in Paris, but in Doha. The president of Madrid has been treading that ground with lead for years, and is ahead of his competitors. Added to that is Mbappé's undisguised passion for Zidane, his mentor.
But, three months after the player enters the final phase of his contract with PSG, which has unsuccessfully offered him a mega-contract of 150 million net for five seasons, The suitors increase and Kylian and her parents, Mr. Wilfried Mbappé and Mrs. Fayza Lamari, receive siren songs from the four cardinal points. The last to join the bid for Mbappé has been Víctor Font, a candidate for the Barça presidency, who wants to give Madrid a Figo.
Font has contacted the French crack environment and he already knows what there is. The player has Zidane as a beacon and thinks blank since the current Real Madrid coach received him at the Ciudad Deportiva Madridista when the footballer, who was then 13 years old, went to the capital to try out for a week with the Real Madrid quarry. It went well, very well. But he returned to Paris with the promise to return …
This episode is remembered by Mbappé in an open letter that he published in The Players Tribune, which is a declaration of love for Madrid and for Zidane. “Just before I was 14, I had an incredible surprise. My father received a call from someone at Real Madrid inviting me to come to Spain for a test during the holidays. They had actually told my father: 'Zidane would like to watch your son. “At the time, Zizou was the club's athletic director. It was like being on the moon. I was desperate to go. Scouts were starting to follow me and I was getting media attention. When I'm 13 years old , You don't know how to handle this. There was a lot of pressure and my family wanted to protect me from all that. It was my fourteenth birthday that week and what I didn't know was that my parents were organizing everything so that they could take me to Madrid as a gift. We didn't tell anyone where we were going. I didn't even tell my friends because I was very nervous. If things didn't go well, I didn't want to go back to my neighborhood and disappoint them. I will never forget the moment we arrived at the Real Madrid Sports City, near l airport. Zidane met us in the parking lot next to his car, and it was a really big car, of course. We greeted each other and then he offered to take me to the field to train. He was pointing to the front seat as if to say, 'Come on, get in.' But I froze and asked, 'Shall I take off my shoes?' Hahaha! I don't know why I said that. It was Zizou's car! He saw it as funny. And he said, 'Of course not, come on, come in.' He took me to training ground, and I was thinking to myself, I'm in Zizou's car. I'm Kylian from Bondy. This is not real. I must still be sleeping on the plane. Sometimes, even when you're really living something, you feel like you're in a dream … “. This letter from Mbappé leaves no room for doubt: he thinks blankly and is only interested in Madrid. But still, besides Font, who by the way he was a partner of Ferran Soriano, CEO of Manchester City, Klopp has also wanted to try it, who already has assumed that he cannot compete with Zidane but that he dreams of taking the French star to Liverpool.
Since you wrote that statement of intent, Mbappé has been taking steps to play for Madrid. Some public, like his winks on social networks to some of the white legends, and others private, but more forceful. A relevant one has been the hiring of one of the best specialists in Sports Law: Delphine Verheyden. In Paris they know her as The Iron Lady. “It is implacable”, they say of her. Mbappé will end PSG in 2022, but Verheyden will appear on the scene earlier, in the spring of 2021.