Kylian Mbappé, a future still unclear six months before the end of his contract with PSG

The winter transfer window has just opened its doors on Monday, which allows the PSG striker to negotiate with any club for a departure in January (with a transfer fee) or next summer (being free ).

Like the return of the chorus of a song that never ends. The transfer market opened this Monday, January 1, and, with it, the questions linked to the future of Kylian Mbappé. Will leave, will not leave? But this time, the context has changed. The question arises without the usual agitation. However, like two years ago, the French international will be at the end of his contract in six months, which means that the risk is great of seeing him leave the capital without reporting the slightest transfer compensation to Paris Saint-Germain.

Since the first hour of this year 2024, he can therefore negotiate to find a base after the summer. Technically, it can also be sold to another club for a significant sum of money (it is estimated at 180 million euros by the specialist site Transfermarkt). But for the first time since the start of the series sending him to Real Madrid, no rumor insistently sends him to the Merengues, or elsewhere.

Rare appearances and regained status

The person concerned has rarely spoken in the media about his future, knowing that his appearances have been rare since the famous “sand yachts” press conference with PSG in September 2022. “It’s something I don’t want to talk about.”Kylian Mbappé responded dryly to Téléfoot on November 19, tired of the number of questions he had received during the France team rally in June.

The resumption of the 2023-2024 season and the first steps of the new PSG, with Luis Enrique sauce, have almost vanished concerns around the future of the top scorer in the history of the capital club. Overnight, the latter went from being a closeted player, deprived of a tour in Asia for lack of extension of his contract and taken to task by its president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, to the tutelary figure of the team, freed from the heavy shadows of Lionel Messi and Neymar. However, no extension has been made official by the Parisian club.

“We can’t let the best player in the world go for free, it’s impossible.”

Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, president of PSG

at a press conference on July 5, 2023

The only scraps of information that have reached the general public amount to a completely anachronistic press release of Real Madrid. At the beginning of November, when no new rumors suggested Kylian Mbappé’s departure for Madrid, the Merengue club wrote: “In view of the information recently issued and published by various media, which speculate on alleged negotiations between the player Kylian Mbappé and our club, Real Madrid wishes to declare that this information is categorically false and that no such negotiations have taken place. place with a player belonging to PSG”. On December 29, The Athletic announced that Real Madrid would have set a deadline for him in mid-January, a very early date in the season, as if to tell him that he no longer intends to get bogged down in a standoff of several months.

All we know about the interest of other foreign clubs comes from denials in the press last summer, from Manchester City for example, through its coach, Pep Guardiola. “Manchester City is not on Kylian Mbappé”, the Spaniard said during a press conference. Same story with Liverpool when certain rumors reported possible interest from the Reds. “There is no such thing planned (…). The financial conditions do not suit us at all”had cut Jürgen Klopp on the microphone of the Sky channel.

“I will honor my contract”

The tide is turning very quickly in the world of football and these denials are not intended to be prohibitive. The many twists and turns of the Kylian Mbappé soap opera are proof of this. In May 2022, the latter surprised everyone by extending his contract when everything seemed to send him to Spain. Five months later, the 2018 world champion already wanted to leave the capital.

The closer the 2022-2023 season got to its conclusion, the less its future seemed to be in Paris. His exclusion from the group during the summer that followed seemed to be a point of no return, but the captain of the Blues stayed and resumed his key role in the Parisian offensive.

A slight doubt arose when PSG’s current top scorer this season (21 goals in total, 16 more than his runner-up Randal Kolo Muani) rushed to the bus, alone, after qualifying at the last minute for the round of 16 of the Champions League, in Dortmund, mid-December. An episode following which he did not show the slightest smile for a week until his first goal against Metz, on Wednesday December 20, in Ligue 1 (3-1). “It’s a perfect relationship, as always. We’re not engaged or in a relationship, but almost”had defused Luis Enrique before the meeting.

But in the world of football, marriage does not exist. Every lease has a deadline. Kylian Mbappé made a promise at the 2023 UNFP Trophies: “I said that next year I will play for PSG, I still have one year of contract so I will honor my contract.” If this remains valid, the latter will not leave Paris this winter and will wait until at least June 30 – the date of the end of his contract but in the heart of the Euro in Germany – to announce his decision, or after the Paris Olympic Games which he hopes to compete in with the team led by Thierry Henry. Barring yet another twist.