PSG would be cash happy after Al-Hilal offer 300 million euros for Kylian Mbappé
Talk about moral high ground. Things must be bad at Paris Saint-Germain if an unceremoniously sacked former coach says he hopes that the club's travails with the star striker Kylian Mbappé can be sorted out amicably.
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"From my side, nothing to say, only to support them," said Mauricio Pochettino who left PSG in July 2022 after 18 months at the helm.
"I hope they find a solution for both sides. It is a club that I love because I was a player, a captain and a coach there.
"With Kylian we created a very good relationship, I hope they can find the best solution for both sides."
Pochettino can be munificent. The Argentine rules the roost at the English Premier League outfit Chelsea.
He was without a club for a year after a somewhat brutal dismissal in July 2022. His crime? Not bringing the glory hungry PSG supremos the Champions League trophy.
Pochettino left the French Super Cup, the Coupe de France and a 10th top flight championship in the cabinet from his 18 months at the Parc des Princes.
European championship qualifiers
The 51-year-old can look over from west London with a quizzical eyebrow at the internecine conflict engulfing the French champions.
Mbappé was dropped from PSG's pre-season tour of Japan and South Korea as part of the row over his reluctance to sign a contract extension with the club.
It emerged just before France's European championship qualifiers in June that Mbappé had told PSG that he did not want to stay beyond the end of the 2023/24 season and prefers to leave as a free agent when his deal expires.
PSG bosses and their QSI financial overlords suspect that longtime admirers Real Madrid are waiting in the wings to scoop up the Frenchman.
PSG upped the ante and said they wanted Mbappé to sign a new contract and if he did not do so they would try to sell him rather than entertain his departure at the end of his contract when they would receive no money.
And voilà an offer of 300 million euros duly arrived from Saudi Arabian outfit Al-Hilal for Mbappé's services.
Al-Hilal talks
PSG, who won a record 11th French top flight crown last season, said Al-Hilal could talk to Mbappé.
But he has rejected the overtures to play in the Pro League for weekly wages of an estimated 13 million euros.
That refusal essentially means Mbappé will continue at the club he joined in 2017 unless somewhere comes up with an offer deemed acceptable to both sides.
Pity poor – not in the financial sense - new PSG boss Luis Enrique. The 53-year-old Spaniard might face the prospect of having one of the world's best strikers unavailable because club supremos want to keep him sidelined as they preen their pride in an imbroglio of their own making.
Five 'Golden Boots'
To lose Mbappé would be a body blow to a club hierarchy that wants to project its burgeoning grandeur and its domestic preeminence.
At the end of the 2022/23 season, Mbappé was acclaimed the best player in Ligue 1 by his peers in the French players' union – UNFP – for an unprecedented fourth season on the trot.
He also claimed the Ligue 1 "Golden Boot" for the fifth consecutive campaign.
Real Madrid have been heavily linked with Mbappé since early in the 2021/22 season. Mbappé made few friends that campaign by not clarifying his intentions as to whether he would leave for the Spanish giants at the end of that season.
He opted to remain at PSG amid much executive breast-beating and fanfare.
Yet despite his presence last season and the dazzling skills of Lionel Messi and Neymar, the troika were unable to fire PSG to triumph in the Champions League.
Mbappe in Europe?
Al-Hilal tried to sign Messi when he decided to leave PSG but the former Barcelona star opted to move to the United States and the Major League Soccer team Inter Miami.
Stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema have signed up to ply their trade in the Saudi Pro League. They have been joined over the past few months by a dazzling array of talent including Chelsea's N'Golo Kanté and Kalidou Koulibaly as well as Seko Fofano from Lens.
Roberto Firmino from Liverpool and Marcelo Brozovic from Inter Milan are among other big names to head to Saudi Arabia.
A logical attempt then to lure Mbappé. Equally sensible for Mbappé to say he prefers to stay in Europe.
And perhaps the summer of 2023 will retrospectively show the PSG bigwigs the folly of holding on. Had they taken Real Madrid's offers of yore, wished Mbappé well, they could have got on with building their project with other bricks.
Striking failure
"One of the most striking failures that PSG have had is failing to exploit the local market that they've got access to," said Jonathan Wilson, editor of the football magazine The Blizzard.
"The suburbs around Paris – along with south London – are one of the great hotbeds of football talent.
"And yet how many Parisians are there in the PSG squad along with Mbappé – who they bought for 160 million euros from Monaco?
"He let that interest of Real Madrid develop and he used it to get himself more money. I'm not sure I'll be pinning my hopes on him.
"I think it's far more about getting a collective spirit which is something PSG have never had under the QSI ownership and making it less about celebrities and more about how do we actually get this team playing high level football and winning matches in the competition that matters."
A draw with Al-Nassr and a loss to Cerezo Osaka so far on the pre-season tour of South Korea and Japan might concentrate the minds of the PSG executives as they ponder a very near or distant future without the strike.
Why not make do with Kylian for a year and use the time to find a replacement. After all, what is there to lose? The moral high ground went a long time ago.
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