MBAPPE FUTURE IN THE AIR AS MESSI WINGS IN

LIONEL MESSI will be presented today as a Paris Saint-Germain player at Parc des Princes after signing a two-year deal worth a staggering £35million a season. His capture completes an incredible summer for PSG in which they have signed the captains of Barcelona and Real Madrid on free transfers. They have assembled one of the most expensive forward lines ever with Messi agreeing a deal worth only slightly less than Neymar’s estimated £37m yearly contract. Kylian Mbappe completes PSG’s all-star front three, although he is now in the last year of his contract, having turned down three attempts by the French club to renew it, and is holding out for a free transfer to Real Madrid next summer. Messi said: ‘I am excited to begin a new chapter of my career at Paris Saint-Germain. Everything about the club matches my football ambitions.

I am determined to help build something special.’ It remains to be seen what Messi’s arrival does for Mbappe’s willingness to stay and PSG’s ability to keep him without making a mockery of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules. Messi has not trained since winning the Copa America with Argentina last month, so he may have to wait until the game at Reims on August 29 for his debut. He will wear the No 30 shirt he wore on his Barcelona debut 16 seasons ago. Barcelona have spent the four years since PSG paid Neymar’s £198m buyout clause trying to buy him back, and two summers ago they flew to Paris in a failed attempt to re-sign him. Now the Brazilian and Messi link up again, but in Ligue 1 rather than La Liga, with Barcelona straining under a £1bn debt, losses last season of £412m and a wage bill that even now is at 95 per cent of their revenue.