PSG getting ready to lose a World Cup winner

Stuart Telford

• 21 Jan 2023 16:51 GMT
• 4 min read

Paris Saint-Germain have six World Cup winners on their books, but two of them could be set to depart with Milan Skriniar having verbally agreed to join the club from Inter Milan next summer.

Skriniar has become one of the most in-demand centre-backs in world football owing to his performances with Inter and the fact that he is available on a free transfer at the end of the season.

Inter have been determined to hold onto their Slovak talisman, and turned down a €50 million bid from PSG last summer, but they now face the prospect of losing him on a free with the 27-year-old rebuffing their attempts to extend his stay at the San Siro.

READ: Liverpool target Skriniar agrees to join PSG

"Slovak defender Inter Milan Skriniar has given his oral agreement to join PSG next summer," report French sports daily l'Equipe, before pointing out a perhaps inevitable conclusion.

"This may have consequences for the future of Sergio Ramos and Presnel Kimpembe in the Paris defence."

Ramos and Kimpembe are World Cup winners with Spain and France respectively, the former part of the side that won the title in South Africa in 2010, the latter victorious with les Bleus eight years later.

READ: The five PSG players who could leave in January

Ramos got off to a difficult start in Paris after arriving on a free transfer from Real Madrid in the summer of 2021 at the same time as Lionel Messi - the most recent and famous of PSG's World Cup winners - did from Barcelona.

But he has been the club's most-used defender this season alongside captain Marquinhos, with Kimpembe - the vice-captain - struggling with an Achilles tendon injury for much of the current campaign.

PSG have mostly played a back three under Christophe Galtier this season, but with everyone fit and Skriniar on the books, it would be four world class defenders into three positions going forward.

Marquinhos and Skriniar would presumably be two of the starters, leaving one of Ramos and Kimpembe disappointed.

Who are PSG's World Cup winners?

Messi won the 2022 competition in Qatar as part of an Argentina squad that also included Leandro Paredes, the midfielder who has spent this season on loan at Juventus.

Kylian Mbappe was, of course, the star of the France squad that won in Russia four-and-a-half years ago, when he had Kimpembe for company.

Completing this particular sextet after Ramos is Julian Draxler, who was still a teenager when Germany won the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. He has also been out on loan this season, with Benfica.