Starting this summer, Kylian Mbappé, 25, will no longer be a Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) player. The star striker and captain of the France team informed PSG leaders this week of his intention to leave the club at the end of the 2023-2024 season, RMC and L’Equipe announced on Thursday February 15, a information confirmed by Le Monde.
The epilogue of a series which will have kept football fans in suspense in recent weeks as the contract of the Parisian number 7 ends on June 30 and since January 1 he has been free to negotiate his future with any what training. We do not know, for the moment, which team the Bondynois will join, but Real Madrid, the most successful in Europe – with notably fourteen Champions Leagues to its name – has been advanced for several weeks.
The player’s decision, although not surprising, is a blow for the French championship, which sees its best player leave while negotiations on Ligue 1 television rights for the period 2024-2029 are still ongoing. The leak from the club also comes the day after the Parisians’ – sluggish – victory over Real Sociedad in the round of 16 first leg of the Champions League (2- 0), with the return match scheduled for March 5 in San Sebastian. (Spain).
According to Kylian Mbappé, at the turn of the new year, nothing had yet been decided. “If I know what I want to do, why hang around? It wouldn’t make any sense,” the person concerned cut short on January 3, in the corridors of the Parc des Princes, shortly after winning his third Champions Trophy with Paris. Understand: there is no question of reliving the circus of 2022. That year, his commitment with the capital club already expired in June and the player had made no secret of his desire to leave.
But the affair dragged on, parasitizing part of the season and going so far as to mobilize the highest levels of the State – Emmanuel Macron and one of his predecessors at the Elysée, Nicolas Sarkozy, had invited to the debates. After tough negotiations with Real Madrid, the young man finally opted, at the end of May 2022, for a two-year extension with an additional year as an option.
In the annals of French football
This time again, the leaders of PSG initially showed confidence in their ability to convince the prodigy to once again extend the Parisian adventure, seven years after his arrival. And this despite the ingratitude lawsuit they had filed against the attacker after his refusal to activate the optional additional year provided for in his 2022 lease. Kylian Mbappé had given up part of his colossal so-called “loyalty” bonuses. » and even found himself for a few weeks in the “loft”, this group of players under contract with Paris Saint-Germain but who were no longer part of the club’s plans.
On February 8, on the sidelines of the congress of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the Qatari president of the Ile-de-France team announced that there had been “no development” in this matter. “When we both decide, we will tell you,” Nasser Al-Khelaïfi said simply. A month earlier, on RMC, he declared: “I’m not going to hide that I want Kylian to stay, the best player in the world is Kylian, and the best club for him is Paris. »
Eight years after having set foot on a Ligue 1 pitch for the first time – on December 2, 2015, still a teenager and then a resident of AS Monaco (ASM), he came on at the very end of the match against Caen (1-1 ) –, the kid from Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis) will have written his name in the annals of French football. Six French championship titles (one with ASM in 2017; five with PSG in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023), three French Cups (2018, 2020, 2021), two League Cups (2018 , 2020), three Champions Trophies (2019, 2020, 2023). On an individual level, he can also boast of being the top scorer for a French club in the Champions League, of having been the top scorer in Ligue 1 on five occasions, of being the most awarded footballer at the UNFP trophies, being crowned best player in Ligue 1 four times and best hope three times.
He is also the record goal scorer for Paris Saint-Germain. “I play to write history and I have always said that I wanted to write history in France, in the capital of my country, in my city,” he insisted, moreover, on March 4, 2023, when, at the end of a match against Nantes, he erased the mark of the Uruguayan Edinson Cavani from the shelves.
Before closing this chapter and opening the next, the attacker can still write a few lines. Paris is currently leader of the championship with eleven points ahead of its runner-up Nice. The club is also still involved in the Coupe de France, of which it will play the quarter-finals at the end of February, and in the Champions League.