On Thursday, May 5, on the terrace of a restaurant in Madrid (El Babero, by chef Cuchy Pérez, daughter of Florentino Pérez), in an informal conversation, a PSG official took a journalist aside and told him: “I have bad news to you. Mbappé stays in Paris.” He gave several reasons, one private and family, another football (“he wants to win the World Cup in Qatar by playing for a French club [propiedad de Qatar], and believes he owes him a Champions League with PSG”) and a policy: the French Republic and the Qatari dictatorship had made his stay in Paris a national cause. It was the same week that Real Madrid began to believe that Kylian Mbappé could back down and break the verbal agreement he had arrived at the club with. “We had his word. Contrary to popular belief, the word is also important in these large companies. It defines you in front of others, in front of those who will treat you later, to whom you then have to pledge the same word. But we’re not fools: we’re talking hundreds of millions, state clubs, a 23-year-old boy… You can understand; We never took it for granted that Mbappé would come,” says a merengue manager.
In reality, the player hadn’t decided anything on May 5 but he had long since cut off communication with Madrid. This PSG man picked up the phone of this newspaper this Sunday: “Of course I didn’t know exactly when I said that. But the sensation at the club was that he stayed. In the last few days we had noticed a change and our department working in the coming year we were told to expect our star to be there. On Tuesday, May 17, upon his return from Qatar, Mbappé assembled his clan and announced the decision. He kept it hidden from the public for a few days during which an unbearable storm broke out around him, his entourage, PSG and Real Madrid. When Madrid played Betis at the Bernabéu on Friday, a player in the dressing room asked Florentino Pérez about Mbappé. Pérez said he thought he wasn’t coming, that he backed out. Another player overhearing the conversation noted, “Well, if you don’t dare, you’re not worth being here.” Some players took to their social media to respond. The story on Instagram of Benzema, Mbappé’s teammate and partner in the national team with whom he has (had?) a great relationship, was striking: his bandaged hand pointing to the shield in one story and another in which a Photo emerges Tupac, the murdered rapper, emerges with the person who allegedly betrayed him.
The next day, Saturday, Florentino Pérez received a message from Kylian Mbappé on his mobile phone. The footballer told him that he had thought a lot about it and that he was sorry but that he was finally staying at Paris Saint Germain. The President of Madrid replied, thanking him for the communication and wishing him luck at his club. “It’s a shame that recent circumstances have kept you from your dream of playing for Real Madrid,” he wrote. The circumstances Pérez is referring to are political pressures. From former French President Sarkozy to the current Macron, to the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, to the Emirate of Qatar. “You put him in a situation of total panic. The pressure the player endured is unacceptable. Little less than they told him that the future of the nation depends on him, “say sources close to the President of Madrid, a club whose harassment is censored by social networks (and by some journalistic opinions), where the target Mbappé until he hardly makes him realize less that he does not dare to visit Madrid. “The boy endured as long as he could and he endured a lot. He is 23 years old. His head was turned upside down. We’re disappointed but not angry and of course harassment and insults don’t and shouldn’t suit Madrid,” the same sources say.
Hours after exchanging messages with Pérez, Mbappé announced his decision at the Parc des Princes with a celebration worthy of a title. He then scored three goals against Metz in his last game of the season. That evening, a Madrid manager admitted something nasty: “PSG’s last game of the season is against Metz and Madrid’s last game of the season is the Champions League final, five in eight years. That’s when we wanted his hat-tricks.” On Sunday, Kylian Mbappé said on his social media that he would be the first white fan against Liverpool and had one more loving gesture: “Thank you Madrid and Florentino Pérez. His disappointment lives up to my doubts .”
This Sunday, one of those responsible for the negotiations with the French star and merengue manager was honest: “My personal opinion: he never wanted to sign and he was never close to us. I will say something else. We did for that boy what we didn’t do for anyone (Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham, Bale). And not because we needed it, because we have players up front and we cook two world stars (Vinicius and Rodrygo), but because it’s different. It gave us something different. Mbappé is a hand grenade in the backpack. The match won’t light, are we playing badly? We have a grenade in the field. We did everything we had to do. And we lost. We lost a war that we would never lose if those before us didn’t have oil money and weren’t playing with marked cards.”
The club are less worried about Mbappé’s absence than about Madrid’s future ahead of the first lost pulse of a star who has also expressed his desire to come to the Spanish capital. “Our money comes from the games, from the TV rights, from the Bernabéu, from the real economy; theirs don’t come from football: a country gives them to football and they turn them into inflation with the approval of the regulator, UEFA.” be. Until when can Madrid stay Madrid?
There is one player who was happy with Mbappé’s decision on Saturday: Rodrygo Goes. The 21-year-old Brazilian forward, who was in full swing at the end of the season, feared the Frenchman’s presence would hamper his arrival in the starting XI (this season he has alternated it with substitutions in key games). A fear shared by neither Florentino Pérez nor the club’s general manager José Ángel Sánchez, who for three years when the youngster joined Chamartín believed he would become a reference striker in Madrid’s trident. A few days ago, at the end of the Cádiz game, one of the white team’s coaches said of him: “He has a subtlety and a synthesis that you can’t see in other strikers. Play the way everyone wants to play. And then you have what you don’t train for, what makes you successful here or not: star”.
When Mbappé announced on Saturday night that he was not going to Madrid, Rodrygo posted a photo of him kissing the sign and a message: “Passion”.
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