Kylian Mbappé saga shows football’s power lies with players, not clubs

So whose side are you on in the fallout following Kylian Mbappé’s decision to stay with Paris Saint-Germain? Watching the extraordinary outrage in Spain, with the press accusing the Frenchman of lacking class and La Liga branding the deal as “scandalous”, has raised eyebrows. But not as many as PSG being able to stump up a €200m-plus package for the world’s best player – despite making a €224m loss last year.

There are no good guys here, only a gnawing unease that the laws of economic gravity are being defied to the further detriment of the game we love. As La Liga put it in an unprecedented attack, the transfer showed that state-owned clubs, such as the Qatar-run PSG, “do not respect and do not want to respect the rules of a sector as important as football” and that “sporting integrity” was at stake.

They are big claims and La Liga has backed them up with a vow to file a complaint to Uefa and the EU. Yet Real Madrid are hardly paragons of virtue in this area. Last year they were central to the European Super League project, which threatened the sporting integrity of European football far more than Mbappé staying with PSG. Recently they were also one of four Spanish clubs ordered by the EU’s highest court to pay back millions of euros after it ruled they had benefited from state aid.

PSG have privately brushed off La Liga’s attacks, with one executive insisting to me that its €224m loss was allowed under the current Uefa financial fair play rules, which were loosened because of the pandemic. It is also understood that at a PSG board meeting this month it was revealed that Lionel Messi made the club €15m last season, even after all his costs were taken into account.

The message was clear. Yes, Mbappé’s deal is crazily