Manchester City’s victory parade had barely begun when, 600 kilometres to the south, a would-be competitor for football’s biggest prizes was feeling a sharp pang of envy.
A letter, formal and cool in tone, had reached senior executives in the offices of Paris Saint-Germain and, on Monday evening, its contents were made public.
It was from PSG’s most valued employee. In it, Kylian Mbappe, 24, informed his bosses he does not intend to trigger the contract extension option in his current deal with them, a deal that expires next year.
On Tuesday he clarified, in a statement, that he has long regarded the two-year PSG commitment he signed in 2022 as no more than a two-year bind.
Mbappe’s overt signal he is preparing to leave has plunged PSG into an intense period of high-stakes confrontation with their superstar, a 24-year-old in a hurry to add a European Cup to his long list of honours.
Events in Istanbul, where City won their first Champions League at the weekend, have sharpened Mbappe’s ambitions. PSG, who have over the past decade spent similar sums on recruitment as City, are now the lone so-called "superclub" without a European Cup to their name.
If Mbappe lets his current contract wind down, he will in 12 months become available to move on without PSG recouping any fee at all on a player in whom they have invested hugely – €180 million to Monaco for signing him in 2018, plus vast wages and signing-on bonuses.
If they put him on the market this summer, they will lose a figurehead and their biggest match-winner, but would have a good chance of recouping something close to the money they paid Monaco.
Although the number of clubs who could viably bid that sort of fee are limited, there would be keen interest in the World Cup winner, who has been the leading goalscorer in France’s Ligue 1 in five different seasons.
Two summers ago, Real Madrid bid €200 million for Mbappe, initiating a tense saga that PSG now fear being replayed over the next 12 months. Then, PSG turned Madrid down even though Mbappe’s contract was to run out nine months later, meaning he could leave for free in June 2022. Madrid believed Mbappe intended to do just that.
Last May, however, he surprised Madrid, the club Mbappe has admired since childhood, by announcing he had committed to PSG for a further two years. He had been offered what was then the highest annual salary in the game’s history; he had been phoned by France’s president Emmanuel Macron, who told him it would be good for France to have the leading French sportsman remaining in France.
But PSG have hit a glass ceiling in Europe. Since they came under Qatari ownership in 2011, a net spend on transfers of close to €1 billion has yielded only a single silver medal in the Champions League. Since City defeated PSG in the semi-finals in 2021, there have been successive exits at the last-16 stage.
Mbappe’s disappointment, after a 3-0 aggregate defeat to Bayern Munich in March, was clear. “That was our maximum,” he said after an insipid PSG performance in the second leg. “We have to be realistic.”
The following month, he clashed publicly with the club, criticising PSG’s own marketing department for using clips from an in-house interview with him to sell season tickets for the 2023/24 season. “This is not Kylian Saint-Germain!” he posted.
Mbappe’s latest communication is harsher, and puts PSG in a dilemma: keep him and wave goodbye next June, leaving them empty-handed in financial terms; or sell now. PSG are understood to be ready to listen to high offers.
On principle they are reluctant to enter talks with Madrid, with whom PSG have an abrasive relationship, but also acknowledge that other big-spenders, like Chelsea, cannot offer Mbappe Champions League football next season.
Nor could Liverpool, who have previously shown interest in the France captain but would struggle to meet the price demanded by PSG.
City, meanwhile, have in the past two summers invested heavily in Jack Grealish, who operates from the left flank position favoured by Mbappe, and in Erling Haaland, 22, and bracketed with Mbappe as one of the superstar duo to dominate elite football for the next ten years.
At the weekend, Haaland beat Mbappe to a significant target, a first European Cup; over the season, Haaland outscored the Frenchman, with 52 goals across all competitions to Mbappe’s 41.
Madrid remain convinced Mbappe wishes to join them. While they urgently need a high-class striker to replace Karim Benzema, who has left for Al Ittihad of the Saudi Arabia Pro League, the Spanish club are prepared to wait until 2024 for him.
Harry Kane, whose contract with Tottenham Hotspur expires next June, is also a Madrid target. A successful swoop for Kane, 29, and likely to carry a price tag of close to €100 million this summer, would most likely exclude a simultaneous bid for Mbappe.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Read more about the coronavirus
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Starring: Saja Kilani, Clara Khoury, Motaz Malhees
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Rating: 4/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
What are the main cyber security threats?
Cyber crime - This includes fraud, impersonation, scams and deepfake technology, tactics that are increasingly targeting infrastructure and exploiting human vulnerabilities.
Cyber terrorism - Social media platforms are used to spread radical ideologies, misinformation and disinformation, often with the aim of disrupting critical infrastructure such as power grids.
Cyber warfare - Shaped by geopolitical tension, hostile actors seek to infiltrate and compromise national infrastructure, using one country’s systems as a springboard to launch attacks on others.
Farage on Muslim Brotherhood
Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.
The five pillars of Islam
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
The five pillars of Islam
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Indoor cricket in a nutshell
Indoor cricket in a nutshell
Indoor Cricket World Cup - Sept 16-20, Insportz, Dubai
16 Indoor cricket matches are 16 overs per side
8 There are eight players per team
9 There have been nine Indoor Cricket World Cups for men. Australia have won every one.
5 Five runs are deducted from the score when a wickets falls
4 Batsmen bat in pairs, facing four overs per partnership
Scoring In indoor cricket, runs are scored by way of both physical and bonus runs. Physical runs are scored by both batsmen completing a run from one crease to the other. Bonus runs are scored when the ball hits a net in different zones, but only when at least one physical run is score.
Zones
A Front net, behind the striker and wicketkeeper: 0 runs
B Side nets, between the striker and halfway down the pitch: 1 run
C Side nets between halfway and the bowlers end: 2 runs
D Back net: 4 runs on the bounce, 6 runs on the full
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
Blackpink World Tour [Born Pink] In Cinemas
Starring: Rose, Jisoo, Jennie, Lisa
Directors: Min Geun, Oh Yoon-Dong
Rating: 3/5
Favourite things
Luxury: Enjoys window shopping for high-end bags and jewellery
Discount: She works in luxury retail, but is careful about spending, waits for sales, festivals and only buys on discount
University: The only person in her family to go to college, Jiang secured a bachelor’s degree in business management in China
Masters: Studying part-time for a master’s degree in international business marketing in Dubai
Vacation: Heads back home to see family in China
Community work: Member of the Chinese Business Women’s Association of the UAE to encourage other women entrepreneurs
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
In numbers
Number of Chinese tourists coming to UAE in 2017 was... 1.3m
Alibaba’s new ‘Tech Town’ in Dubai is worth... $600m
China’s investment in the MIddle East in 2016 was... $29.5bn
The world’s most valuable start-up in 2018, TikTok, is valued at... $75bn
Boost to the UAE economy of 5G connectivity will be... $269bn
SPECS
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