Last night reliable Italian journalist Fabrizio Romano confirmed that Real Madrid have made a formal bid for €160m to sign PSG and France international Kylian Mbappé this summer. However, in recent hours it has been confirmed by the Parisian’s Sporting Director Leonardo that the Frenchman will be going nowhere.
This is a transfer saga that we expect to play out over the next 12 months, as €160m is an incredible amount of money to offer for a player who is out of contract at the end of the 2021/22 season. According to Romano, Kylian Mbappé has turned down more than three different proposals from PSG to extend the contract and is waiting to leave the Ligue 1 club. These reports have seen Mbappe’s transfer odds sit at 1/3 to join Real and 2/1 to stay with the Parisians.
Former AC Milan legend Leonardo also added that “We have NO plan to talk with Real Madrid again. Will Madrid raise the offer? I don't know. I only know what I said in relation to Madrid's attitude. They have been working on Mbappé for two years, talking to everyone, the family…Real Madrid bid for Mbappé seems like a strategy to show they were trying every way to sign Kylian and that’s it. They’ve been disrespectful, incorrect, illegal and unacceptable. We’re NOT accepting €160m. If he wants to go, it will be for our conditions.”
It is seemingly obvious that Mbappe wants to leave the Parc des Princes club to join Real Madrid, due to the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo was the 22-year-old’s idol as he was playing for Los Blancos when he has growing up.
Something that has staggered a lot of people is the Frenchman’s supposed willingness to leave, is the fact that he has seen his team sign Lionel Messi from Barcelona as well as the likes of Sergio Ramos, Achraf Hakimi, Gini Wijnaldum and Gianluigi Donnarumma, which has put them as the favourites to win the Champions League, a trophy which he is yet to win having finished as runner-up to Bayern Munich in 2020.
A move for Mbappe has been linked with a potential move for Ronaldo from Juventus to PSG in what would essentially be a super team with both him and Messi in the same starting line-up, something which would further increase the French clubs already rapidly growing brand exposure and see two of the best players of all time take the field together for the first time, having been long-standing rivals.