(Madrid) The endless soap opera has come to an end: after more than seven years of rumors and desires, French football star Kylian Mbappé officially signed up on Monday for five years with Real Madrid, the club that has made him dream since ‘childhood.
In a press release awaited all day by the press around the world, Real Madrid formalized the arrival “for the next five seasons” of its new “Galactic”, a priority of the Spanish giant which has been trying for several years to wrest away from Paris and France its superstar.
The European champions “are strengthening their team with a world star, who had his best season with PSG (44 goals) and was the top scorer in the last six French championships,” writes the Merengue club on its website.
Free to sign wherever he wishes since the announcement of his departure from Paris Saint-Germain, where his contract ends on June 30, the captain of the France team is opening a new chapter in his already young career at 25. filled with success.
He leaves the capital after seven seasons at the club and with the status of top scorer in the history of PSG (256 goals in 308 matches in all competitions), but a contrasting legacy spoiled by a stormy end with his supporters and his managers.
Elected best player in Ligue 1 five times in a row, the 2018 world champion, who arrived in Paris in 2017 after his explosion at AS Monaco, reigned supreme over his championship, without managing to realize “his dream”: offering PSG its first Champions League.
At Real, orphan of a world-class scorer since the departures of Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema, he is expected to lead the King of Europe, who has just celebrated a hat-trick (C1, Liga, Spanish Super Cup) towards his sixteenth C1, and open a new era of continental domination.
Mbappé, who repeatedly repeats his wish to “mark the history” of his sport and said in May that he needed a “new challenge”, will then be in the right place to satisfy his thirst for glory and trophies.
“Kyks” will form in Madrid alongside the Englishman Jude Bellingham and the Brazilian Vinicius Junior a new trident capable of shaking Europe, which the Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti will have to make coexist on and off the field.
According to the Spanish press, he should receive one of the highest salaries in the history of the club –– around 35 million euros gross per season –, just above Vinicius and Bellingham, the two current stars of the locker room , but far from his Parisian emoluments, estimated at 70 million euros ($52 million) annually ($104 million), excluding bonuses.