Neither with you nor without you. PSG and Mbappé are the classic couple who spend their lives breaking up and reconciling, although in their case the sentimental story, in addition to tragicomic edging and with hundreds of millions of euros at stake, also has geopolitical connotations.
After a fight that has lasted for weeks and has kept the football world in suspense, the Parisian club and the striker have smoothed things out. Mbappé returned to training yesterday and everything indicates that the captain of the French team will continue at least until the end of the season. As leaked in various media, the script twist entails new conversations for the extension of the contract until 2025, as the Qatari owners intended, but it would include a clause that would make it easier for Mbappé to leave the club in the summer of 2024 if a buyer –? Real Madrid?– is willing to pay the amount that PSG asks for.
The Qataris wanted to avoid at all costs that the player was released next year and PSG, which paid 180 million euros to Monaco in 2017, was left without any income. It was a matter of honor and image, as well as financial. It remains to be seen, however, if the supposed roadmap is fulfilled or if a great scuffle will break out again.
“After very constructive and positive discussions between Paris Saint-Germain and Kylian Mbappé before the PSG-Lorient match, this Saturday, August 12, the player has rejoined the first team this morning,” the club statement said.
Hours before breaking the news there were already indications that something had moved. Mbappé, who had been removed from the team like a plague, without participating in the Asian tour and having to train with the players discarded from the squad, had gone to the Parc des Princes to watch the match against Lorient from the stands. He then went down to the locker room. Mbappé had also greeted very effusively, via Twitter, the arrival of Dembélé.
Circumstances meant that Mbappé’s return was seen as an absolute urgency. The team, under the command of Luis Enrique, only managed to draw 0-0 against Lorient, ranked tenth last season. The team from the capital dominated, but they lacked punch in the area, just what Mbappé can provide.
“The Parisians, harmless without Mbappé”, titled the newspaper Le Parisien on the front page. L’Équipe wrote on its front page that PSG is still “a team under construction” and needs filming.
There was no point in prolonging a situation that seemed crazy around Mbappé and that perplexed the long-suffering PSG fans, who have been dreaming in vain of winning the Champions League for years.
It cannot be ruled out that, once again, as happened last year, there have been very strong extra-sports conditions and pressure for the club and the player to put an end to the summer farce. In 2022, when Mbappé seemed destined to go to Real Madrid, there was an intervention by President Emmanuel Macron himself so that he would not leave Paris. The head of state recently commented, when asked by a person on the street, that he would continue trying to keep the player from leaving.
The calendar has been a relevant factor in the unexpected turnaround of the latest dispute between the striker and the club’s Qatari owners. Mbappé, who will turn 25 in December and is in his sporting prime, could not risk a season without playing. That would have made his participation in the Olympic Games in Paris next summer and in Euro 2024 unfeasible. France is gambling too much on his prestige as a country. It was unimaginable that Mbappé would not participate in such important events. The turn of the case, even if it seems disconcerting, has all the logic of realpolitik, of sports and political pragmatism.
