(Paris) Kylian Mbappé has informed Paris SG that he will not activate the additional year at his disposal to extend until 2025, which forces his club to consider leaving this summer to recover transfer compensation.
The capital club took a new blow on the head with the decision of its star striker, announced Monday by mail, and revealed by the daily The Team.
It comes just over a year after his surprise extension to PSG, the club he joined in 2017 against 180 million euros from Monaco. The vice-world champion, courted in particular by Real Madrid, had extended until 2024, with the possibility for him to activate an option for an additional year.
The Frenchman made his decision known on Monday in a letter sent to the club, a source close to the negotiations confirmed to AFP. The deadline to make your choice is July 31, 2023.
Asked late Monday evening, Mbappé’s entourage did not react immediately.
A departure of the 24-year-old striker at the end of his contract, in the summer of 2024, would prove catastrophic for PSG, because, in addition to the void left in the team, the club would be deprived of millions of euros that a transfer would provide him.
Under these conditions, the red and blue club has two solutions, according to the source close to the negotiations: either convince it to finally activate the extension clause, before the deadline of July 31, or try to sell it to a club as of this summer and recover a large sum of money in exchange.
“One more year of contract”
The wish expressed by the French on Monday is one more annoyance for the owners of QSI, the Qatari fund that arrived in 2011, after an already difficult season on and off the field, despite obtaining the title of champion of France.
Again in failure in the Champions League, the club is currently working to find a successor to Christophe Galtier, placed on an ejection seat a year after his arrival from Nice.
Without a coach, PSG also said goodbye to Argentine world champion Lionel Messi, at the end of his contract and left under the whistles of the Parc des Princes, and the experienced Sergio Ramos. The future of striker Neymar, under contract until 2025, also appears rather vague.
As for Mbappé, he had already hinted that he could leave in 2024, during the UNFP trophy ceremony on May 28, during which he won a fourth consecutive title of best player of the season in the League. 1.
“I said that next year I will play at PSG. I still have a year on my contract so I will honor my contract,” said the top scorer of the 2022-2023 season.
Monday’s development will come amid the gathering of the France team, of which Mbappé became captain after the World Cup in Qatar, which ended in a loss in the final against Argentina.
In Clairefontaine, where the Blues are preparing their next qualifying matches for the Euro, the striker appeared very relaxed on Monday. Smiling and lodger, he participated in late afternoon training in a good mood, joked many times with Didier Deschamps and Antoine Griezmann and signed dozens of autographs for spectators invited by the federation.
Nothing that foreshadowed, in any case, such an important episode being played out behind the scenes.