Mbappé, PSG and the dangers of a loveless marriage – 02/20/2024 – Sport

This time, Kylian Mbappé has decided. Reports of his decision to leave PSG, his hometown team, may have brought with them an unmistakable feeling of déjà vu.

News about the departure could have been copied and pasted, almost verbatim, from the last time it happened, and the time before that. But this time, it’s different. It’s not a negotiating move. It’s not a power struggle. He is going.

Given the situation, of course, the cynical response is also the sensible one. Mbappé has a track record, after all. Less than two years have passed since he and PSG last stepped to the brink, his boxes packed, his desk emptied, his farewell card signed. And then, just as Real Madrid were preparing the Santiago Bernabéu stadium for a festive performance, Mbappé backed away.

What exactly convinced him to stay in Paris in 2022 is unclear. Perhaps it was the intervention of Emmanuel Macron, the French president. Perhaps it was the promise of having an unusual influence on the club’s transfer policy — Mbappé has always vehemently denied that this was the case.

Anyway, there he was, holding a shirt next to Nasser al-Khelaifi, president of PSG, repeating the catechism that he could never leave his team, his city, his country so many times that when the press conference was over, Mbappé probably believed that too. So far, there is no reason to believe that this scenario will not repeat itself over the next four to six months.

And yet, the fact that we are here again — and so quickly — talking about his departure needs to be evaluated. It illustrates, first of all, how curiously loveless the union between Mbappé and PSG seems to have been. When he joined the club in 2017, it was possible to detect a romance even amid the dizzying whirlwind of zeros and commas needed to describe the figures involved.

After all, he was the Parisian prodigal son: born and raised in Bondy, in the city’s neglected hinterland, now returning home a conquering hero, a superstar in the making. He would be the symbol of not only what PSG wanted to be, but also where it was.

The prevailing sentiment over the past seven years, however, has been distinctly transactional. PSG provided Mbappé with a permanent presence in the Champions League — only until the first knockout stage, usually, but still — a series of French championships and the kind of adulation and branding opportunities that befitted his status.

Mbappé’s presence, in turn, acted as proof of PSG’s power, its virility, its authenticity as the modern superclub that its Qatari sponsors always imagined it to be. There was something in the relationship for both of them, but it rarely seemed to go deeper than that. Both sides talked about an emotional bond. There seemed to be more in theory than in practice.

This could have been different if the agreement had fulfilled the hopes invested in it by both parties. In his time in Paris, Mbappé emerged as one of the most marketable and recognizable athletes on the planet. He is, without a doubt, one of the most talented players of his generation.

Looking back, however, it is difficult to say — apart from his string of French championships and his bank account — exactly what he had to be proud of from the period. He scored hundreds of goals and created hundreds more. He often proved decisive in games.

But choosing an iconic, defining moment is difficult. Most of their domestic achievements are in some way marked by the fact that, well, PSG’s success is essentially inevitable. Each of the club’s previous Champions League victories has proven to be nothing more than a way station on a path to disappointment.

The glorious interludes in Mbappé’s career — the things that, if he retired tomorrow, would be remembered by him — instead came with the French national team, both on the way to 2018 World Cup victory and eventual disappointment in Qatar, four years later. There’s no shame in that. Pelé is better remembered internationally with the yellow shirt of the Brazilian team, after all, than with the white one of Santos.

Still, it’s probably fair to assume that’s not exactly what Mbappé intended for his career. It’s certainly not what PSG had in mind when they made an 18-year-old player the second most expensive in history in the summer of 2017. Mbappé, alongside first Neymar and then Lionel Messi, was also expected to establish the club as a genuine superpower , one on par with Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and the Premier League giants.

It didn’t.

No matter how much money the club has spent, no matter which coach it has hired – Mbappé is now on his sixth – or what approach it has adopted in the transfer market, PSG has failed to break into the elite. He hasn’t been European champion yet. At times, it came dangerously close to becoming something of a running joke. This is certainly not what Qatar had in mind when it embarked on its football adventure.

We still don’t know how the story ends. After all, we’ve been here before. Mbappé was serious on other occasions too. His mind was made up. He wanted to fulfill his childhood dream of playing for Real Madrid. He was looking for another love story.

And then, in the end, he retreated. Real Madrid’s offer was not enough to convince him, and no other team came close. Even in the cash-soaked towers of the Premier League, the amount needed to seal a deal for Mbappé was simply too high to consider. The Frenchman wanted a contract that reflected his value.

But the value is not a fixed number. It depends entirely on the context. It turns out that Mbappé is worth more to his local club than anyone else. In fact, that’s the reality at the root of your relationship: an agreement, broadly speaking, about what he’s worth. Maybe this time it will be different.

Perhaps, to enhance his legacy, he will have to sacrifice something else. Or perhaps, once again, he discovers that, no matter how much he wants out, his price is simply too high. Maybe, despite the lack of love and broken promises, possibly the best player of his generation has nowhere to go.