Less than five months after Kylian Mbappe signed a new three-year deal to supposedly end uncertainty over his future, Paris Saint-Germain are once again facing the possibility of losing the French superstar.
The Qatar-owned club are top of Ligue 1 and their Champions League group, but all is not well in the French capital with a series of reasons given for Mbappe to want to leave.
French release The Team reported that Mbappe is set to ‘break his contract’ – a three-year deal worth $392m (AUD) – and PSG are ‘untrustworthy’.
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ESPN reported that Mbappe, according to sources, decided to leave in January and regretted his decision not to go to Real Madrid.
It has completely overshadowed PSG’s preparation for Sunday’s game against bitter rivals Marseille.
Speculation began on Tuesday, hours before Christophe Galtier’s side are due to host Benfica in the Champions League, with Spanish sports daily Marca and several French outlets reporting that Mbappe wants to leave as early as the January transfer window.
In recent weeks, Mbappe has made it public that he is unhappy with the position he has been asked to play under new coach Galtier’s system, stressing after playing for France last month that he has ” much more freedom” playing for his country.
Mbappe still scored his 12th goal of the season for PSG as they drew 1-1 with Benfica but is believed to be disappointed the club failed to sign a first-team centre-forward. class at the end of the season – for example Robert Lewandowski, who went to Barcelona.
PSG football adviser Luis Campos told Canal Plus that Mbappe had ‘never spoken to me about leaving in January’.
However, that was before investigative site Mediapart reported on Wednesday that an agency called Digital Big Brother (DBB) had worked on behalf of PSG to roll out a series of Twitter accounts with the mission of restoring the club’s image. .
The job was to pursue a number of targets named by the club, including a fan slapped by Neymar after PSG’s defeat in the 2019 Coupe de France final and a woman who accused the Brazilian of raping her.
But there were also internal targets, like Adrien Rabiot – now with Juventus – and Mbappe himself.
“We worked for PSG. It bothers us for our reputation that PSG denies working with us,” Frédéric Geldhof, who worked for a DBB subsidiary called UReputation, told AFP.
PSG have ‘firmly’ denied claims that they asked the agency to work on their behalf.
“We were doing everything for him to extend his contract. We weren’t going to secretly troll him,” a source, formerly linked to the PSG board, told AFP of the allegations that Mbappe was targeted.
The case bears similarities to the ‘Barcagate’ scandal which reportedly saw Barcelona hire a firm to smear opponents of the club’s board on social media.
That may not do much to help PSG’s relationship with their biggest star, although the club are surely unlikely to agree to sell Mbappe in the January transfer window.
Watch: Laurent Blanc More than six years after his last training in Europe, Blanc is back on a Ligue 1 bench this weekend as he takes charge of Lyon for the first time against Rennes. The 56-year-old replaces sacked Peter Bosz.
He arrives with Lyon languishing in ninth place in the table, already nine points from the Champions League places. Blanc coached PSG from 2013 to 2016, winning three consecutive Ligue 1 titles. His only coaching job since then came at Al Rayyan in Qatar, where he spent a year before leaving in February.
—AFP
