Kylian Mbappe's future up in the air after world-record €300m bid by Al Hilal

Posters advertising the event have been hastily redrawn. Paris Saint-Germain, the club who last month had the captains of Argentina and France on their staff, have touched down in Japan for the pre-season tour without the departed Lionel Messi.

That they foresaw. But, in the bombshell development of their summer, PSG are also without Kylian Mbappe, whose face had been the most conspicuous in the marketing material for the event.

The Frenchman has stayed behind in Paris, not because of injury but because of an increasingly aggressive stand-off between him and his employers. The Mbappe saga is the long shadow cast over Tuesday's highly-anticipated Osaka friendly for PSG against Al Nassr. Less than a week ago, it had a deluxe cast list: Cristiano Ronaldo on the one side, facing off against Mbappe on the other.

The meeting of the most electric attacking footballer of his generation and the French flyer who has assumed that mantle in the next is on hold, perhaps for ever, although if Al Hilal, of Saudi Arabia’s Pro League, were to realise their bold ambition of buying Mbappe this summer, the next CR7-Kylian match-up would take place soon enough – and in a competitive setting, in Riyadh in late November.

A world record bid of around €300 million ($332 million) for Mbappe from Al Hilal has been put to PSG. But it is unlikely the skipper of France, 24, will be planning a move to the Pro League at this stage in his career. What the bid signals, though, is that PSG have effectively acknowledged their superstar is for sale, and that, if market-busting fees are already being offered, then that is what any buyer should expect to pay.

Mbappe is publicly insisting he expects to be a PSG player through the coming season, honouring his