Ice ages haven’t lasted that long.
Kylian Mbappé to Real Madrid… has been around for at least a decade.
The Athletic He didn’t even exist when the couple began courting. Twitter was still fun (and it was called Twitter), Taylor Swift hadn’t heard of football, and the closest we got to a global pandemic was watching Contagion.
It has been an inexorably long saga, in fact the worst kind of transfer saga, with endless posturing, incessant lies and misrepresentations and millions and thousands of stories claiming it is finally happening.
Well now, once and for all, it surely is. Mbappé will leave PSG and we would have to assume that next season he will play at the Bernabéu (assuming that another club does not have the opportunity to surpass them and ends up in, say, Osasuna) and the football world can concentrate. We are talking about other things like, now You know, soccer games.
The best player in the world will not rot in PSG’s reserves, believe it or not. They will also not grant you permission to work in the garden. Instead, he will play for the club he has always wanted to play for and Real Madrid will sign the player he has always wanted to sign. Imagine that.
If you think we’ve had a tough time here, try living in Spain, where coverage has been similar to what we would receive for the death of a member of the royal family in the UK.
In recent months, since Mbappé did not use the option to extend his contract until 2025, things have become fierce. On television and radio, whether Real Madrid win or lose games, whether Jude Bellingham scores goals or not, whether Carlo Ancelotti stays as coach or leaves, Mbappé news trumps everything.
Don’t worry, the saga is almost over (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
Ancelotti will regularly face questions about Mbappé in press conferences, which is to be expected. But Real Madrid players, Javier Tebas (president of La Liga), even Xavi and Joan Laporta at Barcelona, have all been questioned about their opinion of Mbappé. Honestly, who cares? Apart from television producers who need to satisfy an insatiable need for continuous 24/7 football coverage.
Why would anyone want to know what Laporta thinks about another club signing another player? Ask Nick Knowles what he thinks of the UK falling back into recession while he does it. It is useless up to the point of full saturation, a stage we reached with this on/off transfer many years ago.
The covers have been dominated by Mbappé in Spain for years, relentlessly focusing on “the decision.”
“Mbappé will want to play for Real Madrid,” shouted a Marca headline in April 2020. Presumably, “in 2024” was in the fine print.
“Mbappé takes the step” followed in September of that year, hinting that he was on his way to Madrid. Presumably just on vacation.
“The game of the summer” was last year. Perhaps they were referring to the Ashes.
There has even been a saga within a saga, with Madrid feeling betrayed by Mbappé when he opted to sign his latest extension with PSG. Madrid fans said they would not forgive Mbappé… for choosing to stay with his current employers. Grow.
The journalists were also in it. Mbappé’s decision to remain in Paris was described as “the biggest mistake of his career”; Even if he won the Champions League and another World Cup, it wouldn’t be enough. Oh, and the fact that he wanted to stay in the fifth best league in the world indicated “He is held in very low esteem”.
Mbappé in 2022 committing his future to PSG for, well, at least a couple more years (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
However, that seems like a very Real Madrid thing to do; pure indignation at any player in the world who dares to reject them. It’s a very special kind of attitude, one that has fueled and exacerbated the most boring soap story since Ian Beale’s struggles to lose weight on Eastenders.
There has never been a time when it didn’t look like Mbappé would be heading to Real Madrid at some point in the near future. It’s always been when, not if, even when he tweeted “LIES” about a report that he wanted to join Real last summer. “I have already said that I will continue at PSG where I am very happy,” he added, while miming David Brent’s long nose.
To be honest, we say It’s a done deal, but we certainly need to be prepared for the next chapter. Which club will Mbappé join now that he has confirmed that he is leaving PSG? Within minutes of today’s news, an odds comparison website sent out an email (so hastily that the subject of the email mistakenly read “Kylian Mbappé will leave Real Madrid in the summer of 2024”) stating that there was an “implied chance of 83.3 percent.” ”That Mbappé was going to Madrid, but also a 3.8 percent chance that he could go to Barcelona, a move that would involve more lever pulling than an octopus running a train station.
But for now, it looks like it’s finally over. And when we finally see Mbappé holding up that famous all-white kit, we’ll all feel relieved. Unless it’s Leeds United against a PSG Bosman in 2034.
(Top photo: Julien de Rosa/AFP via Getty Images)
