Why Mbappe STILL wants to leave PSG

Robin Bairner

• 12 Aug 2021 08:00 BST
• 3 min read

Kylian Mbappe appears no closer to signing a new Paris Saint-Germain deal, despite the arrival of Lionel Messi to the club.

The signing of the Argentine temporarily pushed the debate over Mbappe’s future to the sidelines, with the stunning transfer completed a matter of days after Messi’s departure from Barcelona became known.

The World Cup winner’s future, though, remains as distant from PSG as ever.

It is reported in both Spain and France that Mbappe still wants to leave PSG, and while that will not happen this summer due to Real Madrid’s financial incapacity, it will in a year’s time, when he is available on a free transfer.

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Real Madrid calling Mbappe

PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi publicly called out Mbappe during Messi’s presentation on Wednesday.

Prior to that, Mbappe’s official reasoning for having doubts over PSG was that he was concerned about the competitiveness of the project.

Since then, Sergio Ramos, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Achraf Hakimi, Georginio Wijnaldum and, of course, Lionel Messi have signed. PSG now have arguably the greatest gathering of individual players that football has ever seen. Certainly, they have the most formidable (and expensive) group in the world have present.

“He has said he wanted a competitive team and we could not have one that is any more competitive,” Al-Khelaifi said.

“He has no excuses to do anything other than to stay.”

The excuses may be gone, but Mbappe’s desire to leave reportedly has not. Real Madrid are still calling to him.

The reason? It has not been made public but AS reports that Mbappe wants to be the outstanding player in his team and recognised as such. With a litany of stars around him at PSG this, of course, is impossible.

However, this flies in the face of his previous claims that he wanted a team capable of winning the Champions League – such squads almost always have two or three leading players.

Nevertheless, Mbappe’s time at PSG could well be up by July 2022.