If the leader of La Liga wants to recruit the striker next summer, it is indeed not yet the time to flirt: “Kyky” and the merengue club will not exchange gifts on Tuesday, during the round of 16 first leg. Champions League.
“My decision is not made. Playing against Real Madrid changes a lot of things, ”assured the world champion at the microphone of Prime Video on February 6, confirming however in hollow the interest he has in the” White House “.
After June 30, when the player’s contract expires, the mating season will officially begin. Unless there is an unlikely contract extension with PSG, Mbappé (23) will then be free to commit wherever he wants. And he has never hidden that he has long been a big supporter of the Madrid club: his childhood room was lined with posters of Cristiano Ronaldo with the white jersey.
And in the France team, he displays a great bond with Karim Benzema who has multiplied the calls from the foot since his return to the selection.
Real has been making eyes at him for years. The Madrid giant had pulled out all the stops to recruit the prodigy when he was 14 years old.
He tried a new approach last August, but PSG, all in their ambition to finally win the Champions League, refused a staggering offer of 190 million euros.
“Cost-effective by nature”
Dismissed again, the Merengue management has not given up and hopes to attract the free player next summer. For her, Mbappé is in line with the “Galactics” who wrote the legend of the club… and maintained its economic prosperity.
With the 2018 world champion, it is a prospect of additional income that is offered to the club, orphan of a planetary superstar since the departure of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018.
Mbappé is the perfect headliner for the inauguration of the renovated Santiago-Bernabeu stadium, scheduled for the end of 2022, which should generate around 320 M EUR in revenue per year. The timing also coincides with negotiations for Real’s main shirt sponsor, with the current contract with airline Emirates expiring in June.
“A player of this caliber is profitable by nature. It gives you a media impact, it makes you sell jerseys…”, explains Placido Rodriguez Guerrero, president of the Economic Observatory of Sport in Spain.
“It will not be madness, far from it. When the big clubs make an investment of this caliber, they amortize it. Because the gain in global visibility is immense,” he explains.
Despite losses linked to Covid-19 estimated at 300 M EUR, the merengue club keeps the kidneys strong enough to afford the prodigy, to whom he would have offered a gross annual salary of 50 M EUR, according to the German daily Bild which assured end of January that an agreement already existed between the two parties.
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Better known than DiCaprio
For the player, joining the 13-time Champions League-winning club seems a natural extension of a rising career since hatching at Monaco.
“He will thrive wherever he goes,” deciphers Jérôme Neveu, founding president of Advent, a sports marketing specialist.
“We have seen an extremely rapid growth in its image, at all levels. Kylian Mbappé ticks all the boxes, he continues. According to our index, he is now better known than actor Leonardo DiCaprio in France. Perhaps the possibility of going to another club can give it greater influence abroad, in Asia in particular. »
Real, which had three times more subscribers on social networks in 2020 than PSG according to Deloitte (251 M against 89 M), offers him greater exposure, in line with the enormous ambitions of the player, who has the Ball Gold in the lead.
Beyond the Madrid club, the entire Spanish championship is delighted with the probable arrival of Mbappé… especially since another superstar in the making, the Norwegian from Dortmund Erling Haaland, is coveted at the same time by several clubs, including FC Barcelona.
“If Mbappé and Haaland came (in La Liga), they would occupy the place that Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo occupied a few years ago. It would be at these heights, ”says Placido Rodriguez Guerrero.
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