Kylian Mbappe’s split with PSG widens into a war of words

PARIS – The summer’s biggest football soap opera has already begun, just when the transfer window opened for business on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, after news broke that Kylian Mbappe had told Paris Saint-Germain via a letter that

he would not extend his contract beyond 2024,

the French superstar striker broke his silence.

In a statement and on social media, he said his decision had already been communicated to PSG last summer, a declaration that was immediately rejected by the club.

And on social media, he denied a French newspaper report that he wants to join Real Madrid this summer, calling any such suggestion “lies”.

He was, as he wrote on Twitter, “very happy” at the club for now.

By then, however, both parties were engaged in a contentious, and very public, back and forth.

PSG officials had privately expressed shock on Monday after receiving the letter informing them that Mbappe would leave the club next summer, which had been leaked to French news media before it arrived at the club’s offices.

They believed they had been making progress in negotiations over a new multi-year contract, according to an executive familiar with the negotiations.

But Mbappe’s representatives denied there had been any negotiation on a contract extension and said the letter was merely a written confirmation of what he had told the club a year ago, less than two months after signing his current nine-figure deal. The club knew then, Mbappe’s side said, that he would not be taking up his option to stay for a third year.

PSG made no public statements about Mbappe or his plans on Monday. But after his claim that he had never discussed renewing his contract, they issued a curt response.

“It is emphatically untrue to say Mbappe’s team have not been involved in renewal discussions,” a spokesman said.

The rising divide between Mbappe and the club could lead to an endgame PSG had hoped to avoid – Mbappe’s exit from Paris, perhaps as soon as this summer.

But as was the case during a similar period of brinkmanship last summer, the possibility remains that player and club could still reconcile – but only if he agrees to change his stance and sign a contract extension.

Mbappe’s club status will be the talk of football for the second straight summer.

In 2022, it required the personal intervention of French President Emmanuel Macron to finally persuade him to commit to at least a few more years in Paris.

Now PSG are gaming out possible outcomes. Should they sell Mbappe immediately, rather than risk losing him for nothing as a free agent next summer?

Or can they find a way to persuade a club to pay a sizeable transfer fee now to secure the promise of his signature once his PSG contract ends?

What is unthinkable, at least from PSG’s perspective, is for the club to receive nothing for a player in which they have invested more than US$500 million (S$671 million) since his arrival in 2017.

Just in 2022, PSG paid a signing bonus of more than US$100 million to seal his new contract.

Now, club officials fear Mbappe has already given his word to Real that he will sign with the Spanish club when his contract ends.

For now, he has reiterated in his statement his intention to stay in Paris for one more season.

“After maintaining publicly in recent weeks that he would be a PSG player next season, Kylian Mbappe has not asked to leave this summer and has just confirmed to the club that he would not be activating the extra year,” read the statement attributed to him and his representatives.

PSG had expected that Mbappe, 24, would eventually move on, but they did not expect his intentions to be made public via Monday’s letter.

As the saga rumbles on, the executive in the supposed contract negotiations said PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi had discussed the matter with Mbappe’s mother and that other club executives had reached out to Mbappe directly.

But there was little clarity over what had happened, only confirmation of the player’s intention to leave. NYTIMES