It’s officially Silly Season in the world of football as reports are circulating that Paris Saint-Germain has accepted a €300 million offer from Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal for Kylian Mbappé, with his reported contract set to obliterate the current record.
Paris Saint-Germain’s talismanic forward Kylian Mbappé shocked his club’s hierarchy this summer after he announced he would not be signing a contract extension with the French champions, signalling his intention to leave at the end of his current deal in 2024.
Naturally, PSG didn’t want to lose football’s hottest prospect without any compensation, and put Mbappé in the shop window with a view to selling him this month, hoping to recuperate some of the €180 million (~$295 million AUD) paid to Monaco in 2018.
Enter Saudi Arabia; the oil-rich Middle Eastern state has made no secret about its intention to buy huge portions of the global sporting calendar to realise its public sports-washing agenda, investing heavily in the ATP tennis circuit and channelling billions through Chelsea’s new owner’s financial company in recent months.
Now, Al-Hill, one of four state-funded, state-controlled clubs in the Arabian Peninsula, has offered a record-breaking contract to French forward Kylian Mbappé, proving that the Saudi Pro League’s financial reach is seemingly limitless and will continue to go unchecked.
Kylian Mbappé’s reported contract offer from Al-Hilal in Australian dollars revealed.
| $1,149,673,040 | Per Year |
| $95,768,219 | Per Month |
| $21,836,401 | Per Week |
| $3,119,485 | Per Day |
| $131,182 | Per Hour |
| $2,186 | Per Minute |
| $36 | Per Second |
For reference, Cristiano Ronaldo signed a €200 million (~$315 million AUD) a year deal with Saudi club Al-Nassr in January, almost double what Mbappé is currently earning at PSG, to become the highest-paid footballer in the world at 38 years old. Ronaldo’s introduction as the face of the Saudi Pro League raised some eyebrows at the beginning of this year, as one of the greatest to ever play the game traded in the lofty heights of European football for one final Saudi paycheque.
WATCH Cristiano Ronaldo makes huge gaffe during his first press conference in Saudi Arabia below.
The financial power of Saudi Arabia is staggering; it’s uncapped, unregulated and this point, just unbelievable. Ronaldo’s predictions, whilst they may seem farfetched, could easily come to fruition if Al-Hilal is able to prize Kylian Mbappé to the Saudi Arabian capital.
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Al-Hilal is one of four clubs in the Saudi Pro League that was recently purchased by the Saudi-led Public Investment Fund (PIF) – the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia – alongside Al-Nassr, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli, that in recent months have been flexing their boundless financial muscles to recruit some of Europe’s biggest stars on lucrative multi-year deals.
Kylian Mbappé’s reported deal would obliterate Cristiano Ronaldo’s current Al-Nassr deal – the highest in the history of football – but would still only represent a fraction of the reported $978 billion AUD available to the Saudi state, whose spending power continues to go unchecked and unchallenged as clubs around Europe are salivating at the newly emerged buying league.
According to Sky Sport’s Kaveh Solhekol, PSG believes there is keen interest from clubs in England, Italy and Spain for Mbappé’s signature, although none of those clubs could ever come anywhere close to Al-Hilal’s permanent transfer offer. It’s an open secret that Mbappé dreams of a Real Madrid move to take his rightful place as Cristiano Ronaldo’s heir, but it’s reported that relations have soured since Mbappé re-signed with PSG, rejecting Madrid’s offer last year.
This saga could inevitably drag through the summer months, with Mbappé faced with one of the biggest decisions of his career; does he realise his Champions League dream, or take the money and run?