The announcement shook the football world at the end of last season. After months and months of negotiations and turnarounds, Kylian Mbappé decided to extend his contract with PSG and once once more refuse advances from Real Madrid. However, the Spanish club has long been very close to enlisting the Bondynois and until the last second the trend was for a departure. But the Parisian management had the right arguments to convince him to extend. And this Sunday, the Journal du Dimanche reveals the juicy backstage of this new contract and what caused it.
Complications on the sports project
For PSG, first it was necessary to decide. After arriving at PSG, Kylian Mbappé quickly became the basis of the Parisian project. The one around whom you have to build to make the team progress. And to please the former AS Monaco, it was obviously necessary to offer him special treatment. Which indirectly led to the departure of Leonardo who was once morest granting full powers to a player. “It’s something that doesn’t exist anywhere else. It was a bit like that in Barcelona with Messi, and it went downhill.”, admits a European club leader to the JDD. In this sense, the media explains to us, for example, that the arrivals of Julien Maynard as the club’s communication manager and Luis Campos as sports director are not insignificant. The two men are very close to the Mbappé family and have a very good relationship. What put KM7 in confidence.
But Kylian Mbappé above all wanted guarantees on the sports project as he has explained several times. And even if he does not decide everything, the 2018 World Champion also wanted certainty on the way the team will play for this season. According to the indiscretions of the JDD, PSG had announced to Mbappé that the club would evolve in a 4-4-2 with a certain Robert Lewandowski at his side. The Pole was to land in Paris which planned in parallel to push Neymar towards the exit. Pini Zahavi, advisor to both players, was to take care of this maneuver. But problem, Lewandowski absolutely wanted to join FC Barcelona. What greatly thwart the plans of PSG, which also failed to convince Skriniar and Bernado Silva. Hence the great frustration of Luis Campos.
A positioning and already conflicts
Finally, another very important point in this extension, the positioning of Kylian Mbappé. The 24-year-old was clear: he didn’t want to play anywhere but in the middle or on the left. And this decision created some problems. According to the weekly newspaper, once morest Montpellier during the 2nd day of Ligue 1, Christophe Galtier, very satisfied with his Neymar-Messi duo, wanted to align KM7 on the right side so as not to break the dynamic of the two South American stars. A decision that greatly annoyed the player, just back, but also his father “very attentive to sports matters” according to the JDD. Faced with this reaction, Galtier finally backtracked. But it was during this match that Mbappé appeared very upset on the pitch and that his falling out with Neymar for the “penaltygate” broke out.
This affair caused enormous tensions therefollowing. Even to the point that the Bondynois wanted to have a discussion with Neymar who had “liked” two tweets in the evening criticizing Mbappé on his penalties. KM7 criticized the Brazilian for not really being frank while the latter was ironic regarding the Frenchman’s new status since his extension, explains the French weekly. The tone therefore quickly rose between the two men, especially since Kylian Mbappé also has the feeling that the locker room has been formed around other executives than him since the start of the season. And in this quarrel, the French dropped a small reference to Cavani who had been isolated from the locker room following a “penaltygate”. “I am not Cavani. Me, they won’t do to me what was done to him.”, launched Mbappé according to the JDD. If since then everything seems to be going better, Kylian Mbappé and his gang have not finished talking regarding them this season.
