One regular week of Barclays day of Kylian Mbappe at PSG. That's all we ask. Will never happen
Well, friends, it was a good run, wasn't it? For - what, five entire months? - it seemed
Kylian Mbappe really was staying put at
Paris Saint-Germain.
All of that frenzied speculation about him moving to
Real Madrid had been brought to an abrupt end in May as he jilted Florentino Perez and inked a lucrative three-year deal with PSG - his hometown club, the one he definitely never really wanted to leave at all, honest. The saga was over, surely.
Except no.
Mbappe wants out already *yawns*
There have been rumblings that all is not quite so rosy in the PSG garden of late. Rumours have continued to swirl that, while they tolerate each other on the pitch, Mbappe and Neymar haven't quite been seeing eye-to-eye, bless.
Neymar, according to reports, is
surprised at how much influence Mbappe has at PSG since his new deal... something backed up by reports the France international was left miffed at how Christophe Galtier - a man hired to
manage the team - was playing him.
Merde hits the fan
This week, the merde has well and truly hit the Qatar Airways-sponsored fan.
After deleting an
Instagram post interpreted as a dig at his manager, reports have emerged that Mbappe is regretting his decision to prolong his stay at the club and wants out after all.
According to the French media, he believes the club's owners
have reneged on promises made to him prior to signing his new deal.
PSG 'used bots'
On Wednesday, the plot thickened with a report from
Media Part claiming PSG had taken a leaf out of the Bartomeu playbook and commissioned an external agency to create an "army" of fake Twitter accounts to tarnish the reputation of some of the club's players - including Mbappe.
Unsurprisingly given Qatar's reputation for treating workers incredibly well, PSG's owners have since vehemently denied the claims made by Media Part.
According to a lawyer spoken to by
RMC Sport, however, if proven to be true, this could be seen as grounds for Mbappe to terminate his recently extended deal.
"Each of the parties bound by an employment contract is subject to an obligation of loyalty which is the equivalent of the obligation of good faith existing in all contracts," explains Tatiana Vassine, a specialist sports lawyer.
"This obligation requires that the employee, like the employer, perform their obligations to each other in a fair manner, and obviously without harming the other."
If PSG had used bots in such a way, this would, according to Vassine, amount to a 'breach of loyalty', which could enable Mbappe to free himself from the contract.
We highly doubt Mbappe will end up leaving on a free, but he'd probably have one or two clubs sniffing around if he did.
Expect the saga to rumble on for another few months/years.
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