PSG and Mbappe need to sit down and talk like grown-ups because this rift reflects terribly on all

The talk of a breakdown in the relationship between Paris Saint-Germain and Kylian Mbappe reflects terribly on all parties involved.

Well that didn’t last long. When Kylian Mbappe signed his contract renewal with PSG in the summer, this non-transfer became one of the transfer stories of the summer because of the long-held assumption that he would end up signing for Real Madrid.

The details of his new contract were jaw-dropping. A €100m signing bonus and a €50m salary, as well as what has been largely interpreted as a meaningful role in the future direction that the club took. So desperate had PSG been to retain his services that they were prepared to not only break the bank to keep him at the club, but also to make him the most powerful footballer on the planet to do so.

It’s taken less than five months for all of this to unravel, and this hasn’t even happened as a result of anything on the pitch. PSG have had as strong a start to their Ligue Un season as we might have expected, winning eight and drawing two of their first ten games to lead the division by a point from Lorient, and they scored 17 goals in their opening three matches.

Their Champions League campaign thus far has admittedly not exactly been stunning, but with two wins and two draws from they should qualify for the knockout stages of the competition without too much difficulty.

But relations between Mbappe and the club hierarchy are apparently already close to breaking point, and it doesn’t seem as if there are any innocent parties in this latest drama.

On the one hand, Mbappe’s body language has come in for considerable criticism at points this season, with his reaction to passes that don’t get played to him coming under the spotlight.

But then, with allegations – denied, but that is completely predictable – that PSG employed an external social media company to criticise Mbappe and other members of staff online also doing the rounds, it’s not easy to feel too much sympathy for his gilded employers either.

Of course, the player with ideas above his station has long been a bete noire of the football media, and it shouldn’t be that surprising that hit pieces have already started appearing. There remains a certain strain of football’s culture that hates the idea of players getting too big for their boots, and in an era during which everybody wants control the narrative, when one-sided hit such as this start appearing it’s worth wondering who the ‘sources’…