Kylian Mbappé’s tantrums and feuds a fresh twist in tiresome PSG pantomime

Was there a moment, back in August, when Christophe Galtier wondered what the fuss had been? Did he watch his Paris Saint-Germain team smacking in 21 goals in their first four games of the season and think how easy this all was? Take what is probably the starriest forward line in the history of the game, let them play and watch the brilliant goals stack up. Lionel Messi, after a disappointing first season in Paris, was re-energised. Neymar, playing alongside his mate, was thriving. And Kylian Mbappé …

Well, what was Mbappé? He was still impossibly quick. He scored four goals in those first four games of the season, but the signs of discontent were already there. Of course they were, for this is PSG, where discontent is ever-present, a club described by a recent former manager as “a nest of vipers”. Mbappé may have just, thanks in part to the intervention of the president of the republic, Emmanuel Macron, snubbed Real Madrid to sign a three-year contract extension worth around £50m a year and with a £100m signing-on bonus, but he wasn’t happy.

To which the only conceivable reaction can be a weary sigh – even if, since Succession, we’re apparently fine with dramas in which every party is deeply unlikeable. Increasingly frequently in the increasingly tawdry world of modern elite football, you find yourself asking what football is.

The Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, seems to assume that it’s a tool to make him money (and look at the recent Champions League performances of his other Super League loyalists, Juventus and Barcelona; why should they not be entitled to more?). The only owners who seem not to have bought wholesale into the fallacy of perpetual growth are those using the game as an agent of soft power, to