Paris Saint-Germain are expected to lose their most prized asset, Kylian Mbappe, at the end of the season with the expiry of his contract at the club, leaving them without a superstar within its attacking rankings for the first time since the Qataris took over the club. Without arguably the best player in the world and still on their quest to become serial winners of the UEFA Champions League, Soccer Laduma international football writer Kamogelo Motecwane looks at how the French giants could achieve their desired success in a post-Mbappe era.
Mbappe mesmerised by Madrid
As the France captain runs down the remaining months on his current deal at the Parc des Princes, it almost seems a mere formality that he will ditch the French capital for Spain's equivalent, with Real Madrid looking his likeliest destination. There has been a mutual interest from both parties for some years now, but it now looks as though their union will finally be formalised, and that Mbappe will become a Galactico. It is unfortunate for Les Parisiens, who will lose not only one of the best players in the world, but a footballer French people can resonate with as he is a fellow Frenchman performing at the highest level for the best team in their country. In his seven years playing for the record Ligue 1 champions, Mbappe has gone on to become the club's all-time top goalscorer, lifting 13 domestic honours in the process. When they acquired his services from AS Monaco, however, the prevailing school of thought was that he, along with Neymar, would help the club fulfil their foremost ambition of winning the UEFA Champions League. That has not gone according to plan as the Parisian juggernaut is still without European football's biggest piece of silverware. The 25-year-old is also still without a Ballon d'Or to his name, but with his contract expiring and him bound for the PSG exit door, it seems the forward fancies his chances of winning both the aforementioned titles with Los Blancos.
The Mbappe ripple effect
While Les Rouges-et-Bleus may be bidding farewell to one of their greatest-ever players, they probably do not need to look far in order to find the next Mbappe. When the Bondy native was growing up in the mid- to late-2000s, PSG was not the European force it perhaps is today as before Qatar Sports Investment (QSI) took over the club, they only had 16 titles in their entire history, according to Transfermarkt, having watched the likes of Olympique Lyon dominate French football. The Middle Eastern investment has since catapulted the club to astronomical heights, though, which has allowed them to attract some of the world's best players. Mbappe, being from Paris and having gone on to become such a mammoth figure in the club's history, has provided young footballers with a perspective of PSG that he may have not been fortunate enough to see, as they are not only a French side be so dominant with superstar names, but also one with a superstar Frenchman leading them. This may seem insignificant, but with the constant emergence of prodigious young talents from Paris, and France as a whole, QSI may be reaping the fruits of the Mbappe transfer for many years.
Products of Paris
The reigning French champions may be bidding farewell to the 2018 FIFA World Cup winner at the end of the campaign, but his involvement at the club may have set them up to the point where they could unearth the next Mbappe in the next few years. Parisian suburbs seem to be a gold mine of sorts for emerging worldclass footballers, and has been for close to two decades. The likes of Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Lilian Thuram all hail from Ile-de-France (as Greater Paris is known) and this emergence of players from that region has only grown in recent years, with stars such as Mbappe, Ousmane Dembele, Ibrahima Konate, Paul Pogba, Ousmane Dembele and N'Golo Kante having all been regarded as some of the best players in the world at some point in their career. The large population of immigrants that now populate the Parisian suburbs has created an epicentre where young footballers emerge, with many of them looking to escape the hardships of growing up in drab and densely populated apartment blocks.
They hone their talents on the streets of French capital and if PSG keep their ear to the ground, this is where the future of the club could lie. Paris is so steeped in rich footballing talent that not all of them are even good enough to make it into the French national team. According to CBS Sport, at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, 30 players from nine teams were from the French capital or its suburbs, 11 of whom playing for Les Bleus. At the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, meanwhile, 107 players at the tournament were French-born, while 54 of them were born in a Parisian suburb. For all the success that QSI has achieved at PSG with their massive amounts of spending, they seem to have neglected developing what could well be their future by rarely bringing French natives through their development systems. Of their record arrivals since the 2011 takeover, only five of the top 20 most expensive arrivals have been French, and considering the number of world-class players who have hailed from the capital and the nation as a whole, it seems as though the club's current ownership group is not using their resources in a way that could be most beneficial.
No PSG academy pathway
It would be unfair to completely criticise the Qataris for not recognising the obvious talent that is so prevalent in the city of their club. Over the years, the likes of Kingsley Coman, Adrien Rabiot, Alphonse Areola, Presnel Kimpembe, Christopher Nkunku, Moussa Diaby, Yacine Adli and Mike Maignan, among others, all walked through the halls of the PSG Academy, but apart from Kimpembe, all the aforementioned have left the French capital for various reasons and gone on to be successful elsewhere. They may have not been good enough to have been integrated into the senior team when the time came for them to receive regular gametime, but one wonders how good they could have been for the club had they been given a chance to succeed at an institution as big as Les Parisiens. Being nurtured in better facilities and around better-quality players could have done them a world of good and speaks to the immense talent that is at the club's disposal. Traditionally, clubs like Olympique Lyon and AS Monaco are held in higher regard in France than PSG as far as youth development is concerned, but because they are so far away from Paris, the Ligue 1 champions could have the upper hand in finding and producing world-class young talent as it is right on their doorstep.
PSG have abundantly wealthy owners, but it seems, for them, that splashing the cash on marquee players from around the world has been more of a priority. While this has allowed for them to garner a tremendous amount of domestic success and also made them incredibly marketable, the club has failed to attain their one wish, to be kings of Europe. Mbappe is now on the verge of leaving, but perhaps if the club invested more heavily in the nurturing and integration of French and Parisian natives, they could achieve a harmony and a synergy that could see them become serial winners of the Champions League.
The clamour to keep Mbappe at the club seems to not only be for football reasons, but also because he represents a sense of French nationalism, which their population demands from the best team in the country. His exit may set the club back in the short term, but the impact he has had at PSG will no doubt make the next generation of French footballers want to don the blue and red of the club, something the institution's chiefs need to capitalise on if they want to have sustainable and long-term success.
