A month after being dismissed from his post, Leonardo breaks the silence. In an interview that stretches over three pages in the columns of The Team Friday June 17, the former sports director of Paris Saint-Germain returned to his departure and the results of his Parisian years.
The 52-year-old Brazilian denied any possible “causal relationship” between his dismissal and the choice to stay in Paris of Kylian Mbappé, courted by Real Madrid. “No, it was the end of the championship and maybe it was time to decide things for the future”, he replies when asked about it. And to continue: “The fact of having kept a player of this level, French and Parisian, is important for PSG and Ligue 1”. Since then, without having formalized the departure of Leonardo with a press release, the Parisian club announced, on June 3, the arrival of the Portuguese Luis Campos as sports adviser.
Sporting director of PSG between 2011 and 2013, Leonardo returned to this position in 2019. “Three years in football, today, it’s huge”, does he think. During this second term, he succeeded in resounding blows on the transfer market, with in particular the arrival of the Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and especially that of the sevenfold Golden Ball, Lionel Messi. The Argentine star had, until last summer, worn the jersey of only one professional team, that of FC Barcelona.
Even if the first season in Paris of the “Pulga”, never at its level, turned out to be very disappointing, Leonardo was pleased with The Team to have realized “the only transfer of Messi in his career”. “When I take stock of my three-year record, I see a C1 final (2020), a semi-final (2021), the 10th league title, seven (other) national trophies and I add Messi”, also estimated the Brazilian.