Kylian Mbappé tells PSG he intends to leave

Kylian Mbappé has told Paris Saint-Germain that he intends to leave the club when his contract expires next June — a bombshell decision that could lead PSG to sell Mbappé for a gargantuan fee this summer.

Mbappé has one season remaining on that lucrative contract, plus an option to extend it through 2024-25. But according to multiple reports on Monday, he and his representatives sent a letter to PSG informing executives that he will not be exercising that option.

Tuesday, Mbappé said in a statement to the AFP that PSG had known since the summer of 2022 that he wouldn’t be renewing his contract with the club.

“The board has been informed since July 15th, 2022 of my decision not to extend beyond 2024, and the letter sent was only meant to confirm what I already told them,” Mbappé said in a statement.

And so PSG, the French superclub that planned to build around Mbappé, its 24-year-old Parisian star, suddenly finds itself staring down the transfer market’s most devilish decision.

Should it stick with Mbappé, take aim at trophies in 2023-24, but risk losing him for free next summer?

Or should it sell the world’s most valuable player, recoup a nine-figure fee and initiate a rebuild?

Real Madrid, and others, would surely be interested.

PSG, until now, was not interested in selling. It had been perfectly comfortable moving on from Lionel Messi, and seemingly willing to let Neymar go as well. But Mbappé, an undisputed top-three player in the world, from Paris’ suburbs, still in the younger years of his prime, was different. He was the centerpiece. Whenever he’d previously hinted at leaving, the club would move heaven and Earth to keep him, and it was reportedly prepared to do so again this summer and next.

But the letter, according to French newspaper L’Equipe, has changed the mood.

Last time around, just last summer, when Mbappé flirted with Real Madrid (and Real president Florentino Perez openly flirted with Mbappé), PSG’s Qatari owners opened their bottomless bank accounts, and France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called to intervene. Macron’s message, as Mbappé recalled it to Sports Illustrated, was: “I know you want to leave. I want to tell you, you are also important in France. I don’t want you to leave. You have an opportunity to write the history here. Everybody loves you.”

This time around, Mbappé’s decision appears to be more firm. Time, of course, could change it; but the timing could not be better for Real, which recently said goodbye to Karim Benzema and is now in search of a new striker.

There could be other suitors as well, of course. If PSG opens up the bidding, Mbappé would be the most coveted player on the market. He could fetch a record-breaking sum, even more than the roughly $260 million that PSG paid for Neymar six years ago.

Most expiring contracts deflate transfer fees, of course, but Mbappé is not most players; he’s “an off-the-planet player” on pace to shatter all sorts of records. His potential availability this summer had thus far been overshadowed by sagas involving Messi, Jude Bellingham, Harry Kane and others; but now he is the story, the man who’ll grab headlines and dictate the market between now and September.