The Mbappé conundrum: good enough for any team, too expensive for most
Following the revelation that Kylian Mbappé intends to leave Paris SaintGermain when his contract expires this summer, Football Daily immediately presumed talk at today’s round of top-flight managerial press conferences would turn to potential destinations for the French superstar striker. “Are you eating a sandwich, in front of me, a Premier League manager?” we envisaged an apoplectic Chris Wilder inquiring, as a local reporter dabbed what looked like sauce from a Greggs chicken baguette from around his lips, before enquiring about the possibility of Mbappé pitching up at Bramall Lane on a free.
While all roads appear to lead to Real Madrid for the World Cup winner we are obliged to describe as “wantaway”, it’s worth noting that we have been here before. Mbappé-to-Madrid rumours have long been grist for the rumour mills of broadsheet, tabloids, transfer gossip websites and click-baiting In The Know social media charlatans whose sister’s best friend once went out with the milkman of a Parisian tyre-fitter who was childhood friends with the PSG striker in the suburb of Bondy many years ago. Alas, it seems Mbappé’s move to Madrid might not be the foregone conclusion it might have seemed a year or two ago, given that the Spanish club are already reported to have made him a derisory offer he is finding all too easy to refuse.
Should Madrid chief suit Florentino Pérez decide, after years of ostentatious flirting, that signing Mbappé would actually be more financial hassle than the player is worth, Mbappé could find himself with a problem. Short of accepting a significant reduction in pay and agreeing to live off the kind of chickenfeed that would still constitute riches beyond the wildest dreams of most mere mortals, it’s difficult to imagine where else he could go. Good enough to play for any team on the planet but too expensive to pull on the jersey of most, one suspects Mbappé could always find a home in Saudi Arabia, a place he has previously declined to go.
Having failed to make a bid for Ivan Toney in January on the grounds that he was out of their price range and they would rather invest what resources they have elsewhere, Arsenal seem an unlikely club for Mbappé although that didn’t stop one reporter from asking Mikel Arteta about the possibility of the 25-year-old inking a contract and posing for photos alongside a big green dinosaur a few months down the line. “When there is a player of that calibre, we always have to be in that conversation,” cheered Arteta. One suspects that any conversation Arsenal, with their rigid pay structure, might have with the striker’s “people” might be a rather short one.
A move to Chelsea to link up once again with Mauricio Pochettino, who Mbappé previously managed while the Argentinian wasn’t really in charge at PSG, seems unlikely given the London club’s straitened circumstances, but a less fashionable Premier League side could be a good match. Largely credited with persuading a young Kylian to hitch his wagon to PSG seven years ago on the back of a rousing speech delivered to the then teenager and his family, who’s to say Unai Emery couldn’t do the same again? And if the player is prepared to knuckle down and form a partnership with Ollie Watkins, who’s to say he wouldn’t enjoy a season or two accepting plaudits from the denizens of Villa Park’s Holte End?
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