Dominating France was a stroll but in Europe they were shown their real place, as it is expected with a club with neither structure nor system. It did not unfold as they had anticipated, and in little time, PSG became a moneyed laughing stock, an emblem of infinite wealth spent unwisely, a collection of jewels who sparkled individually and fizzled out whenever strung together. When PSG acquired in 2017, they considered him the most central piece of their project, their catalyst of glory, their own Messi or Maradona, their legacy-setter, their synonym. No legacy, no romance, just an excellent player racking up goals and gulping titles in arguably the most uncompetitive of the top-five leagues in Europe. The numbers are glittering, six league titles, five with PSG and one with Monaco, 243 goals in 332 games, some of them truly spectacular, but beyond that there is nothing. Yet, his club career has not shone as brightly as it was touted to be, as it could be. He was the undisputed best of the world, the inheritor of a golden legacy and the ambassador of football’s most avant garde footballing philosophy of this century.Ĭontrastingly, Mbappe was barely 20 when he became World Cup winner four years later, he would net a hat-trick in the final, a losing cause but one where his gifts dazzled, and claimed the golden boot, though it offered him negligible consolation. By 24, the age of Mbappe, Messi had added two more titles, besides a hat-trick of Ballon d’Or plaques. But even before he had turned 20, he had held aloft a Champions League trophy. The Argentine was 33 when he first tasted glory in the robes of his country, two more years would pass before he fulfilled his ultimate destiny. In a sense, his career is the inverse of Lionel Messi’s. All great sportsmen are locked in the eternal pursuit of perfection, of eliminating the rough edges, of ticking the boxes, filling the blanks. It was not merely a refusal or a rejection, or him taking a loud political stance, but a statement of his vaulting club ambition, of his hunger for glory in Europe, or even his awareness that his club career has not soared as spectacularly as his time with the national team that it is still in a half-baked state. He and his representatives did not even bother meeting the Saudi club officials, or so goes reports swirling from France. But Mbappe’s eyes did not bulge, his heart did not pound, his mind did not waver. He would earn 600 million pounds for one year of football in Arabia that is 19 pounds every breathing second. Al-Hilal, the Saudi Arabia football club, were willing to shell out 259 million pounds for acquiring Kylian Mbappe, arguably the finest footballer on the planet, from PSG.
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