Mbappé leaves PSG: Thank God it's finally over

Ice ages have not lasted that long.

Kylian Mbappé to Real Madrid… it's been a thing for at least a decade.

The Athletics didn't even exist when the couple started courting each other. Twitter was still fun (and called Twitter), Taylor Swift had never heard of American football, and the closest we came to a global pandemic was watching Contagion.

It has been an unrelentingly long saga, in fact the worst transmission saga of all, with endless posturing, incessant lies and distortions and thousands upon thousands of stories claiming that it is finally happening.

Well, once and for all it certainly is. Mbappe is leaving PSG and you should assume that he will be at the Bernabeu next season (assuming another club doesn't have a chance to beat them and he ends up at Osasuna for example) and the football world can concentrate on other things, such as football matches.

Believe it or not, the best player in the world will not languish in PSG's reserves. He also does not get garden leave. Instead, he will play forever for the club he wanted to play for and Real Madrid will sign the player they wanted to sign forever. Imagine that.

If you think we've had it bad here, try living in Spain, where the coverage is comparable to the kind of coverage we would get for the death of a member of the royal family in Britain.

Since Mbappe did not exercise the option to extend his contract until 2025, things have gotten wild in recent months. On TV and radio, whether Real Madrid wins or loses games, whether Jude Bellingham scores goals or not, whether Carlo Ancelotti stays on as manager or leaves: the news about Mbappé surpasses everything.

Ancelotti will regularly face questions about Mbappé at press conferences, which you would expect. But Real Madrid players, Javier Tebas (the president of La Liga), even Xavi and Joan Laporta at Barcelona, ​​have all been asked about their opinion of Mbappé. Honestly, who cares? Except for the TV producers who have to meet an insatiable need for 24/7 football coverage.

Why would anyone want to know what Laporta thinks about another club signing another player? Just ask Nick Knowles what he thinks about Britain entering another recession while you're at it. It is meaningless until the point of total saturation, a stage we reached long ago with this on/off transfer.

The headlines in Spain have been dominated by Mbappé for centuries, with attention relentlessly focused on 'the decision'.

“Mbappe will want to play for Real Madrid,” screamed a Marca headline in April 2020. Presumably “in 2024” was in the small print.

'Mbappé makes the move' followed in September of that year, implying he was on his way to Madrid. Probably just on holiday.

“The game of the summer” was last year. Maybe they meant the Ashes.

There is even talk of a saga within the saga, with Madrid feeling betrayed by Mbappe when he chose to sign his latest extension with PSG. Madrid fans said they would not forgive Mbappe because he wanted to stay with his current employers. To grow up.

The journalists were also working on it. Mbappe's decision to stay in Paris was called “the biggest mistake of his career”; Even if he won the Champions League and another World Cup, that wouldn't be enough. Oh, and the fact that he wanted to stay in the fifth best league in the world indicated “He has very low regard for himself”.

Mbappe will entrust his future to PSG in 2022 for at least a few more years (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

That feels like a very Real Madrid thing, though; pure outrage at every player in the world who dares to reject them. It's a very special kind of attitude, one that has fueled and exacerbated the most boring soap storyline since Ian Beale's weight loss struggles on Eastenders.

There hasn't been a moment when it didn't look like Mbappé would soon be leaving for Real Madrid. It has always been when, not if – even when he tweeted 'LIES' about a message saying he wanted to join Real last summer. “I have already said that I will continue at PSG, where I am very happy,” he added, doing David Brent's long nose mime.

Honestly: us participation it is a done deal, but we must undoubtedly be prepared for the next chapter. Which club will Mbappe join now that he has confirmed he will be leaving PSG? Within minutes of today's news appearing, an odds comparison website sent out an email (in such a hurried manner that the subject of the email erroneously read: “Kylian Mbappe could see Real in the summer of 2024”) which stated that there was an “implied probability of 83.3 percent”. ' that Mbappé was leaving for Madrid, but also a 3.8 percent chance that he could go to Barcelona, ​​a move that would require more levers than an octopus controlling a train station.

But for now, it feels like it's finally over. And when we finally see Mbappe holding up that famous all-white kit, we'll all be relieved. Unless it's Leeds United on a PSG Bosman in 2034.

(Top photo: Julien de Rosa/AFP via Getty Images)