Well, that was unexpected! While Kylian Mbappe’s impending move to Real Madrid seemed like the worst-kept secret in sports, the French superstar made a last-second U-turn and decided to stay in Paris — for at least a couple of more years.
Mbappe is such a transcendent talent that even a decision to continue playing for the team he has been with since 2017 will send shockwaves across Europe. What does the non-move mean for him, for Paris Saint-Germain, for Madrid and for everyone else? We take a look.
What it means for Mbappe
ESPN reports that Mbappe rejected PSG’s longer-term offers in favor of a three-year deal. Given that he just essentially pitted two of the richest and most desperate clubs in the world against each other, we can assume that he’ll be signing one of the most lucrative contracts in the history of the sport — if not the history of all sports.
Due to the norms of the transfer market, previous superstars would have jumped at whatever kind of mega long-term offer PSG initially put on the table. You’re set for life, you’re protected against injury, and you avoid whatever rents might get taken out of your contract with a new club due to the transfer fee they’d be paying to acquire you. Mbappe, though, has turned the market for soccer players into something much more like NBA-style free agency.
By not signing a contract extension and running down his deal, Mbappe allowed Madrid to offer a contract directly to him. No transfer fees, no negotiations between clubs — just money for him (and his managerial team). In response, he could then take that offer to PSG — a club funded by a trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund in Qatar — and ask for something better. The leverage Mbappe created for himself hasn’t just resulted in money, either. ESPN’s Julien Laurens has reported that Mbappe may have a say in the makeup of the club’s front office. Frankly, it wouldn’t shock me if he also has a LeBron James-like say in who the club signs, too.
Now, contrast this to the Harry Kane situation with Tottenham last summer. He signed a six-year deal with Spurs in 2018. By the summer of 2021, he wanted to leave, but his only recourse was to refuse to go to training and hope that the club would just, I don’t know, do him a solid and let him move to Manchester City for around £100 million. Had Kane signed a three-year deal like the one Mbappe just signed, he could have left Spurs last summer on his own volition and made a ton of money in the process. Who would you rather be? It’s easy; expect more players to follow the Mbappe playbook in the coming years, including Mbappe himself.
His new deal will expire six months from his 26th birthday — smack dab in the middle of his prime. Get ready to do this whole thing again in 2025.
What it means for PSG
Last summer, PSG turned down a €200m bid for Mbappe from Real Madrid. It seemed both a silly (there was only a year left on his contract) and shameless (any club playing by normal financial rules couldn’t afford to turn away that kind of money) thing to do. While the latter remains true, the former was not. PSG remained steadfast in their belief that Mbappe would stay — despite a mountain of evidence suggesting he would not. In the end, they were right and we were wrong.
For a club and an ownership group that’s more concerned with its public image than anything else, rebuffing Europe’s oldest money, its royal elite, in a fight for Mbappe is a massive win.
On the field? Well, they get three more years from the best player on the planet. Across Ligue 1 and the Champions League, Mbappe has scored 171 goals. Since 2010, no other player in Europe’s ‘Big Five’ leagues and the Champions League has scored more than 91 before their 24th birthday. Oh, and Mbappe doesn’t turn 24 until late December. Might as well throw another 10 or 15 on that total.
It’s not just goals, though. Among forwards, per the site FBref, Mbappe rates in the 99th percentile in assists, expected assists, dribbles, progressive carries, and touches in the penalty area. Pathetically, he only ranks in the 98th percentile for progressive passes received and in the 83rd for progressive passes played. The only thing he doesn’t do is defend, but beyond that, he’s a close-to-perfect modern player who can fit with any teammates and in any system. He’s electric in the open field but has had no problems playing for a possession-dominant PSG team, either. He raises your floor and your ceiling.
This season in Ligue 1, Mbappe has scored 28 goals and added 19 assists — the most combined goal involvements in Europe. Since 2010, he’s only the fourth player to record 25 goals and 15 assists in a season, along with Cristiano Ronaldo (2014-15), Luis Suarez (2015-16) and his current teammate Lionel Messi (who did it six times). And before you go yelling “farmer’s league,” Mbappe’s underlying numbers for his career are actually better in the Champions League than in Ligue 1. Barring injury, he’s going to go down as an all-time great.
According to Laurens, Mbappe’s stay could mean the end of Leonardo’s tenure as PSG’s sporting director. The potential replacement? Luis Campos, formerly of Monaco and then Lille, who’s widely considered one of the sharpest team-builders in the sport. It’s yet to be determined what this means for manager Mauricio Pochettino, too, but his rumored replacement, Zinedine Zidane, does seem like a slightly better fit for the lopsided talent currently at the club. As for that lopsided talent, the Mbappe-Messi-Neymar trio underwhelmed this season, and it’s still unclear whether a team with three attackers who don’t defend at all can perform consistently enough to win the Champions League.
Does Mbappe realize that? And if he does, could he be the one to make sure something changes?
Oh boy. “Public humiliation” is becoming a springtime ritual for Real Madrid president Florentino Perez. Last year, it was his failed push as the figurehead for the Super League. And now it’s losing out on a player he was openly and clearly desperate to sign.
Of course, Mbappe could just join Madrid in three years, but three years is a really long time in the soccer world. While Madrid have won a couple of LaLiga titles recently and are back in the final of the Champions League, they’re still between eras. Karim Benzema’s transformation into a team-carrying superstar after his 30th birthday has certainly helped him bridge that gap. But among their 10 highest minutes-getters in LaLiga this season, eight of them will be 30 or older at the start of next season. Per FBref’s average-age metric, which is adjusted for playing time, Madrid clock in at 28.5 — the 22nd-highest mark of the 98 teams across Europe’s ‘Big Five’ leagues.
Mbappe was supposed to lead Madrid into a new era and also serve as a reminder that Real Madrid still are a superclub that attracts superstars. You get him in the door, and everything else falls into place. Instead, they don’t have Mbappe, and Europe’s other under-24 superstar attacker, Erling Haaland, just signed with Manchester City for €60m. Although Madrid beat both PSG and City in the Champions League, it wasn’t enough to change either player’s mind. The club built its previous dynasty by signing established world-class attackers who still had lots of their primes left — and they just whiffed on the two players who fit that mold. Where do they go from here?
All of a sudden, it’s unclear. Real Madrid’s future is all about navigating uncertainty. While Mbappe’s arrival could have faded any decline from the 34-year-old Benzema, now if he gets injured or gets worse, the team’s results will immediately suffer. And although there’s a bunch of young midfield talent on the roster, the reality is that Casemiro, Toni Kroos and Luka Modric still play the majority of the minutes. If the likes of Eduardo Camavinga and Federico Valverde become full-time starters, they could both end up being fantastic but still be nowhere near the level of that trio. David Alaba has helped stabilize the defense, but he’ll be 30 next season, as will new summer arrival Antonio Rudiger from Chelsea. Centre-back Eder Militao is only 24 and played more minutes than everyone other than goalkeeper Thibault Courtois this season, but he has struggled recently and might not even be first choice once Rudiger joins. The 21-year-old winger Rodrygo was brilliant against Manchester City in the second leg of the Champions League semifinals, but we’re still a long way away from penciling him in as a Real Madrid-level starter.
The one bright spot in all of this, I guess, is the one position that Madrid seem set at for the next decade: left wing. That, of course, is Mbappe’s best position, and it’s from where Vinicius Junior has exploded in LaLiga this season, to the tune of 17 goals, 13 assists, a highlight reel of dribbles and an endless appetite for pressing. Without Mbappe, we can expect to see the Brazilian terrorizing right full-backs for Los Blancos for a long time. Across the other 10 positions, though, there are a lot of questions and not as many answers.
