It used to be that a player would demand out of somewhere when the team he was on no longer — or never — did live up to his talent. It’s when he sought, and maybe deserved, teammates and a front office that matched his skills and ambition, which the current one couldn’t.
Kevin Durant has proven you can do that when everything has been bent to your will. Kylian Mbappe is taking it one step further apparently, agitating out of PSG when they’ve just signed him months ago to a contract that pays him around $100 million a year and basically made him GM. Durant really only got to be an absentee coach. Check and mate, son.
Reports are that Mbappe wants out in January, pushing to move to Madrid to finally consummate that long-lasting eyelash-batting relationship they’ve had for years. Funny thing though is that Madrid already has a dynamic left-sided forward in Vinicius Jr. who is tearing the world apart already. It’s likely that Florentino Perez will be unable to resist getting his name in the world’s headlines again with a purchase of Mbappe, but it’s not like Madrid needs him right now.
What really must sting for PSG is that they essentially gave the club to Mbappe to keep him around — letting him pick the sporting director, manager, and have a say in transfers. And now Mbappe is pissed he doesn’t have a central striker he can play off of, or that he has to play with Neymar at all. How much more can a guy want?
But when a team makes you the center of their world, as Brooklyn is finding out, they’ll think anything is possible, including deciding it’s never enough where they are.