Florentino Pérez: “The Mbappé that was going to come is not the one I found in the end; I prefer him to stay at PSG."

Carlo Ancelotti and Florentino Pérez, at the Stade de France, after winning the Champions League against Liverpool.MOLLY DARLINGTON (REUTERS)

After losing Kylian Mbappé and hiring Antonio Rüdiger and Aurélien Tchouameni, the president of Real Madrid referred for the first time in public this Thursday morning to the failed operation with the Paris Saint-Germain striker, in an interview in El beach bar

He said that about 15 days before the soccer player sent him a message telling him that he was staying in Paris, he had already begun to perceive signs that the operation had gone wrong: “We saw that it had changed.

He did not want to do a joint sponsorship act with all his teammates.

He already shocked me.

Football is a collective sport, everyone on equal terms.

That and a number of things.

He had been offered to practically be the leader not only of a soccer team, but of a club.

This is not the Mbappé that I wanted to bring.

Pérez recalled what had always come to him from the French player: “Mbappé conveyed to the whole world his desire to play for Real Madrid, which was his dream.

He has publicly stated it.

We wanted to do it last August, but it was not possible.

They didn't let him”, he said in reference to the offers of up to 200 million euros that Madrid transferred last summer to the Parisian club, with Mbappé's agreement.

But Nasser Al-Khelaifi did not even reply to the offer.

“They didn't want to sell it.

And he wanted to leave."

But the time until the end of this season, and of his contract with PSG, became too long, and according to Pérez, it was enough for the pressure on the player to take effect: “He is very young.

The pressure affects us all, the young people more.

He calls you the president of the republic, he tells you don't go.

It doesn't make much sense for the president of the republic to call you.

That certainly influenced him a lot."

Between the pressures and what Al-Khelaifi offered him, Pérez assured that he had perceived a transformation in Mbappé that did not fit with what he knew: “I want a footballer.

He changes, because they offer him other things, they pressure him, and he is already another footballer, ”he described.

“The Mbappé who was going to come here is not the one I finally found.

If so, I prefer him to stay at PSG.

The one I met is the one from the dream,” he said.

“This Mbappé is not my Mbappé.

I don't want this Mbappé who refuses to do a publicity act with his national team”.

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