The summer 2021 transfer window sure started slow, but it really came alive and showed strong in the second half. We have already seen Lionel Messi switch teams, Cristiano Ronaldo wants to move on, and now so does Kylian Mbappe.
In the eyes of many pundits, it’s Mbappe who will one day take up the reigns as football’s best overall individual player, once Messi and Ronaldo are officially done. According to ESPN, Real Madrid made a €160 million offer to PSG, for the 22-year-old, but saw it rejected.
The report says that PSG will want €200m in order to get to the bargaining table.
And Wednesday saw a revelation that the sport’s all-time second most expensive player wants out of Paris. This is something that has been pretty much understood, for some time, but hasn’t been explicitly stated until now.
“Kylian Mbappe wants to leave, that seems clear,” Club Director Leonardo said to RMC.
“If he wants to leave, we are not going to keep him but it will be done under our conditions.
“We have spoken a lot with Kylian and he always tells us the same thing. Kylian has always promised us that he would never leave the club on a free transfer.”
The Bernabeu has balanced the books enough now that they can go out and splash the cash, and they’ll need to in order to keep up with the biggest boys of Europe.
Mbappe is probably the biggest fish they can reel in, but they’ll need to pony up the dough in order to do so.
“Verbally we’ve said no to Madrid,” Leonardo is quoted in Marca. “We haven’t received another offer from Madrid… If [Mbappe] wants to go, he’ll go, but with our conditions.
“We won’t offload a player for less than we paid for him at 18 years old.”
Mbappe was signed from AS Monaco in 2017 for €145 million plus €35 million in add-ons, making him the most expensive teenager ever and the most expensive transfer ever within a domestic league.
While there isn’t much time left in the summer transfer window, and a deal of this sort is complicated and time-consuming, given all the big money and big brands involved, there is still time for this one to get over the line.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune.
Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
