Fresh from a World Cup heartbreak, the rumours of Kylian Mbappe plotting a move to Real Madrid have already resumed. The 24-year-old rejected a move to Madrid last summer, in favour of a bumper extension at PSG who made him one of the best paid player in the world right now. However, neither Real have given-up their Mbappe-trail, nor the rumours of an offer being proposed every other day are going anywhere.
In the new, absurd rumours, it is being claimed that Real Madrid are ready to offer PSG a staggering €1 billion to acquire the services of Kylian Mbappe. The figure in itself is a joke and former Real president Ramon Calderon has just labelled them with the same tag. Calderon has dismissed such audacious claims which seem utterly “impossible” to him.
The wild fire of €1 billion Kylian Mbappe claims
While it was true that Real Madrid had offered in the excess of €200 million for Kylian Mbappe in the summer of 2021, the new rumours of €1 billion have emerged out of nowhere. According Italian outfit Gazzetta, Real are ready to splash €1 billion if it means they get to sign Mbappe from PSG. The report further breaks down the money, out of which €624 million will be kept aside for the World Cup Golden Boot winner’s salary across a four-year deal, and the remaining will be spent on the fee as well as the agent commissions.
However, Ramon Calderon has rubbished such reports as he feels its impossible for a club to pay such an absurd amount of money for a player. Although there have been concrete reports that Mbappe is partly unhappy in Paris due to the club failing to keep some of the promises it made to him in that three-year extension, it is difficult to anticipate that he moves elsewhere before the EURO 2024. Calderon meanwhile laughed-off the reports as he told talkSPORT:
“I think it [the €1B claims] is a joke! Many newspapers here said in the summer that Kylian Mbappe was coming to Real Madrid, they even said when – the day, the time, the place, the people who will be with him – so you know what happens sometimes with newspapers, they have to cover a lot of pages and a lot of rumours to keep the attention of the readers.
“But I think it’s a joke to say that a club could pay €1bn for one player. Mainly because the player still belongs to a club and he said in the summer that he didn’t want to leave. So if you ask me about this rumour, I can’t believe it, really. Could a football club ever pay €1bn for a player? You know football, never say never… but nowadays I think that would be impossible.
“We saw PSG paying €222m for Neymar which appeared to be an incredible amount of money, and yet they did it. We’ve seen many times amounts being paid that we couldn’t believe before. I find that very difficult, I don’t see anyone paying that amount of money nowadays. You still have financial fair play, I don’t see anyone able to pay that according to their own numbers.
“I would like to see Mbappe at Real Madrid. Nobody would say no to a player like him, how he played in Qatar, how he is able to score goals from any position. He reminds me a lot of Ronaldo Nazario, the Brazilian – the same strength, the same way of running, the same ability to score goals. It seems difficult, but I wish it will happen.”
Meanwhile, Kylian Mbappe has returned to training with PSG within 78 hours of his World Cup final defeat against fellow club mate Lionel Messi’s Argentina. The France forward did however lit up the final with his hat-trick, joining Sir Geoff Hurst as the only players to have scored a World Cup final treble. But he still returned with only the Golden Boot for his 8 goals at the tournament, as he will now look forward to continue his blistering form for PSG.