October 14,2022

Kylian Mbappe wants to leave PSG because he feels cheated. In May he renewed his contract because PSG, as well as making him the highest paid player in the world, promised him a series of things that have not been fulfilled.

The first promise was that he would become the undisputed sporting leader of the project. And that implied Neymar‘s departure from the team. So the fact that Mbappe wanted to leave in July, just two months after renewing his contract, is directly related to the fact that on the first of that month Neymar automatically activated a clause in his contract which extended his stay at PSG for another year until 2027

It was the Brazilian’s defiant response to the intention of Nasser Al-Khelaifi to sell him a few weeks earlier. Not only am I not leaving, but I’m extending my contract for another year. That was too much for Mbappe.

Once the Emir of Qatar gave the order to activate all the necessary resources to get Mbappe to renew, the club entered into a delirious spiral of offers and pressure in which even the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, participated.

People close to the Qatari ruler warned him that giving so much power to a 23-year-old would be a mistake, no matter how good a player he was, and pointed to the case of Leo Messi and Barcelona as an example of the risks to the club’s stability.

But Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani did not listen to reason. Mbappe‘s renewal was the pride of an entire country at stake

In the first few months of the year, Mbappe was given a catalogue of privileges that made him de facto the most important decision-maker in sporting matters at the club. They brought in his confidant Luis Campos as sporting director, they asked for his approval for the new coach Christophe Galtier, they removed many of the members of the Argentinian clan from the dressing room. And, above all, they assured him that Neymar, his great rival, would not continue despite the fact that they had renewed his deal just a year before.

Assurance that Messi and Neymar could leave

In fact they assured him that they had 500 million euros at their disposal just to terminate Neymar and Leo Messi‘s contracts in case Mbappe insisted they should leave. The Frenchman did not single out Messi as expendable, but he did single out Neymar, whose unprofessionalism he believes is damaging to the team

PSG were unable to offload Neymar despite offering him during the summer to Europe’s big clubs, mainly in the Premier League, but his performance and his salary (30 million euros) were a deterrent

And they could not fulfil their promise to liquidate his contract because they saw that it would be a monumental scandal and a definitive mockery of financial fair-play. That, coupled with the failed signing of Mbappe’s first recommendation for reinforcements, Aurelien Tchouameni, who was already committed to Real Madrid, sparked a situation that today, with Mbappe and Neymar in the same dressing room, seems irreconcilable.

That is why the French star has decided to leave to go to a team where he will be the undisputed reference rather than one more in a trio of stars where his prominence is diluted