Kylian Mbappe's 322 Million Dollar Saudi Arabia Transfer Explained
Paris Saint-Germain have accepted a €300m Euros / $322m USD / £250m GBP / bid for Kylian Mbappe from Saudi Pro League club Al-Hilal. However the transfer fee pales in comparison to the $735m+ contract offer on the table for the French forward for just one year of football. Can it actually happen? Yes.
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00:00 Hello there everybody, Adam Cleary, 442 here.
00:07 Wasn't going to do a video on the whole Killian Mbappe thing, but having looked at the Killian
00:12 Mbappe thing, that's mad isn't it?
00:16 If you've somehow missed all of this, the very top headline of it all is that Saudi
00:22 Pro League club Al-Hilal have made an offer of around 300 million euros to PSG for Killian
00:30 Mbappe and PSG have accepted it.
00:33 You're sitting there going "Euros, can't really get my head around that, that's like
00:36 259 million pounds if you're English and about 332 million dollars if you're American."
00:43 What is somehow even more crazy than this is they are going to be offering Mbappe personally
00:49 nearly 700 million euros a year for a one year contract.
00:56 I'm sure you'll have all seen some stuff about Mbappe and PSG, this summer he's got one year
01:00 left on his deal, he was maybe going to extend and then he wasn't going to and then got back
01:03 and forward in the press, so it was pretty much looking like he was just going to have
01:06 to wind down that one year deal and then go to Real Madrid on a free.
01:11 The Saudis are offering to basically buy up that one last year of the contract and then
01:16 still let him leave for a free to go to Real Madrid.
01:20 So in essence here, what we've got is a near billion euro loan and that is f***ing bananas.
01:30 And I know it's quite easy to be cynical about this because we've just got so used to the
01:35 numbers in football being so ridiculous and stupid but even, even, even with the normal
01:41 standards, this is just light years more stupid. Mbappe is already one of the best paid footballers
01:48 in the world, he makes just over like a hundred million pounds a season playing for PSG and
01:52 this is six times that salary.
01:55 Just to try and put it in some kind of context for you, 604 million pounds a year works out
02:01 at about 50 million pounds a month, it is 11 million pounds a week, it is one and a
02:07 half million pounds a day, it is 70,000 pounds an hour.
02:14 It's just over a grand per minute and it's about 20 quid every single second.
02:19 Just to put that into even more context, it's like quadruple what Ronaldo is getting paid
02:23 to play in the same league and about eight times what Messi's getting to play in America.
02:28 It's basically, you've seen Austin Powers where he asks for a hundred billion dollars
02:32 and they all just laugh at him because it's just a ridiculous sum of money.
02:35 This is football's Austin Powers, I want a billion trillion dollars moment.
02:40 But what the hell? I mean how is this going on? Why is this happening? Everything is quite
02:45 scary.
02:46 Well if you're a bit confused, I've done a really good primer, although I do have to
02:48 say it's really good because I did it already on the channel, I'll link to it, I think it
02:52 appears like here and I'll get it in the description, just about like what's going on with the Saudi
02:56 Pro League, why they're investing so much money, how they're getting so many players
02:59 from Europe, what they hope to achieve by that and the impact it's going to have on
03:03 football as a whole.
03:04 But in May, that all changed for the Saudi League when the division's big four, Al-Itiad,
03:09 Al-Nasr, Al-Ali and Al-Hilal, were all collectively taken over by the country's sovereign wealth
03:14 fund, PIF.
03:16 This means that they now have access to near limitless financial resources and are already
03:20 able to offer wages way in excess of all but the very top European clubs.
03:25 But, the thing is, that's a crazy story, but this one, this one right here, the near billion
03:33 dollar loan that's being proposed, this is the craziest story.
03:37 There's nothing, nothing in the world of football right now that could conceivably happen which
03:42 would be more insane than this.
03:45 This is the peak of it, it can't get any weirder.
03:48 And I know, I can see you, that's an enormous claim Adam, football always finds ways to
03:52 get weirder and stupider, but no honestly, honestly, it's the 54th biggest league in
03:57 the world spending a billion quid to get somebody in on a one year loan.
04:02 That's it, you can't top that.
04:04 But here's the thing, and I am just going to start wildly editorialising at this point
04:08 because the numbers have sent me insane, it was the 54th biggest league in the world when
04:13 Ronaldo went there.
04:14 This summer, it might be a lot better than that.
04:17 Like a lot of critics of this move are going to say, well you shouldn't do that because
04:19 you might be one of the best players in the world and you're already playing at a league
04:22 that was probably a little bit beneath you, taking a much bigger step down, it's going
04:26 to hurt your career, it's going to hurt your development, it's going to hurt your legacy
04:29 and well, if we're being really, really unkind to the French league here, the sort of transfers
04:36 that are going through this season from many leagues in Europe to the Saudi Pro League
04:40 means that the gap between Ligue 1 and the SPL, which we're never ever going to call
04:46 it, is probably not as big as you might think now.
04:51 But that is if we're being really unkind to the French league by the way, I personally
04:54 really like the French league, it's my favourite save on football manager right now, I mean
04:57 in Ligue 1, it's a place I like to spend my emotional capital, but just, it's not like
05:05 he's going to play amateur football now.
05:07 And if he does go to Al-Hilal, then he's going to be playing with Ruben Neves, who's gone
05:10 there from Wolves, Koula Barley's gone there from Chelsea, Sergei Malenkovich-Savic has
05:14 gone there from Lazio, so it's not even like when Ronaldo went last year and it was just
05:18 him and a load of people you'd never heard of.
05:20 No offence that team, but like, these are players who could conceivably have gone to
05:24 PSG and been a very normal team-mate for him, they're on his level.
05:28 And the thing as well is that while I think the ball is entirely in Mbappe's court, he
05:31 can either just run down his contract to PSG, they will almost certainly back down on shunning
05:36 him from the team because he's too important an asset not to play and then he can just
05:39 go to Real Madrid for free.
05:41 If I was PSG, I would be pushing very heavily to try and make this happen.
05:47 I know they're not exactly short a buck or two, but they've still got to comply by French
05:51 financial footballing regulations and UEFA's footballing financial regulations and stuff
05:55 and basically getting 300 million euros for a player who's going to leave on a free in
06:02 12 months' time, I would be flying him out there myself.
06:05 Is Kylian Mbappe going to go to Saudi Arabia for one year and then leave for Real Madrid,
06:09 simultaneously elevating that league to even beyond the realms of possibility we thought
06:15 it was going to get to this summer and then going on to still be probably the biggest
06:19 transfer of next summer as well?
06:21 Yes, almost certainly I think this is going to happen, yes.
06:24 And the reason I think it's going to happen is because there's not a single party involved
06:27 in this whole drama that doesn't stand to massively financially benefit from it happening.
06:33 Think about it, PSG get an enormous transfer fee when they weren't going to get any next
06:37 year.
06:38 Kylian Mbappe goes from getting life-changing money to getting life-changing money before
06:41 still getting to go and sign for the club he wants to sign for.
06:44 Real Madrid now don't have to worry about trying to buy him this summer, they can still
06:48 just get him on a free next year without having to worry about any of that.
06:51 That's going to save them a load of money.
06:53 The Saudi Pro League are going to make bank just from having him in that division.
06:58 It doesn't matter what it costs them, it's going to be worth it.
07:01 So there's not a single, single party here who aren't going to push really hard for this.
07:06 And that is really all I've got to say about any of that.
07:09 I would genuinely encourage you to watch a Saudi Arabia video because this is like the
07:13 bizarre solid gold cherry on top of a very weird but very interesting, very aggressive
07:19 cake.
07:20 Like this was, something like this was always going to happen.
07:23 They were going to go get one of the best players in the world in that division, just
07:27 it was not going to happen this summer.
07:30 And now it has.
07:31 But truly, madly, honestly, deeply, any thoughts you have on this whatsoever, I would f***ing
07:36 love to hear them in the comments below.
07:38 So please do find that.
07:39 You can get me on Twitter as well @adamclearycleary.
07:41 I will be talking about this all day to anyone who listens.
07:45 So let's do that.
07:46 In the meantime though, 442, @442, the new season preview is out.
07:51 Go and buy that and I'll see you next time because...
07:55 Wow.
07:56 Bye.
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