Kylian Mbappe’s future continues to dominate the headlines in Spain and France, after the French striker continued to train apart from the main squad today, after they returned from their preseason tour to Japan.
With the situation not moving, it appears Paris Saint-Germain, Kylian Mbappe and Real Madrid are all waiting for a move from one of the other parties to open the door to a deal. Sport say that Real Madrid would be willing to open negotiations if Mbappe were to make a public declaration of his desire to leave the Parc des Princes.
However this comes with the added factor that Mbappe would be likely to lose all of his loyalty bonuses from here on out if he were to make that declaration, which could cost him anywhere between €60-100m depending on the report.
The Daily Record, as referenced by the Catalan daily, claim that like the Saudi Pro League, Major League Soccer are looking into ways to bring Mbappe to the USA on a short-term deal. Mbappe was not interested a move to the Middle East, where they were proposing a year-long contract with earnings that could have reached around €700m including image rights.
They say that MLS are looking into ways of bringing in Mbappe on a deal that would unite him and Lionel Messi in the same league for a brief period again. Like the Messi deal, it would perhaps require the buy-in from sponsors and even the streaming service Apple TV.
Given Mbappe’s marketing pull and the amount of revenue he would generate, they will no doubt get that. The tricky part would be to persuade Mbappe to spend a year of his career in MLS. Messi is clearly at a different stage in his career, having achieved everything he set out to, whereas Mbappe is arguably coming into his prime. At the time of writing, it seems a long shot. Equally, Mbappe may not believe that PSG would actually bench him for a whole season.
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No world class players are interested in retirement leagues unless they are looking for retirement.