PSG sign Mbappe, Fabinho in stunning record-breaking deal
Paris Saint-Germain have concluded an agreement with AS Monaco to sign Kylian Mbappe and Fabinho from the Ligue 1 champions.
The joint move, which The Daily Record first reported in early August, will push the Qatar-owned club’s outlay on transfer fees alone to well over €400million in the current window.
According to sources familiar with the negotiations, Mbappe’s ultimate transfer-fee cost to PSG will exceed the world-record €222m sum required to activate Neymar’s release clause at Barcelona. A percentage of Mbappe’s fee will be contingent on performance-related variables.
PSG’s acquisition of Mbappe means that a club whose goal is to win a first Champions League this season has inflicted direct damage on both Real Madrid and Barcelona in this summer’s transfer market – as well as preventing Manchester City from signing Mbappe.
Earlier this month, the teenage France international agreed personal terms at the Santiago Bernabeu that would have multiplied his after-tax earnings by more than a factor of 10; with Madrid in the process of finalising a transfer fee with Monaco.
PSG improved the financial terms on offer to both Mbappe, who is expected to be remunerated with a basic after-tax salary of around €9m, and father Wilfried, who represented his son in the negotiations.
Mbappe has played just one full campaign of senior professional football, delivering 26 goals from 44 appearances as Monaco took the Ligue 1 title away from PSG and reached the semi-final of the Champions League, a competition in which the striker scored six times.
The highest profile of a list of extremely talented youngsters recruited for Monaco by former technical director Luis Campos, Mbappe cost the principality club €3m and was on a weekly wage of €34,600.
His sale to PSG ensures that Monaco will have raised more money from transfer fees in a single window than any club ever, with Bernardo Silva, Benjamin Mendy and Tiemoue Bakayoko all sold to English Premier League clubs in the most prominent of the French champions’ earlier sales.
