by Kylian Mbappe will compete against Paris Saint-Germain for the first time since she left the French club a year ago when the Real Madrid Revolution of Xabi Alonso received the biggest test on Wednesday in the semi-finals of the Club World Championship.
Mbappe should be remembered as a PSG legend after spending seven productive campaigns there and finally leaving 256 goals in 308 games as top scorer ever.
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But his legacy was a little spoiled by the way of his departure, the meaning among many that in the last half of his time in Paris he was only waiting for the right moment to move to Madrid, the club he had represented as a boy.
PSG was not satisfied under its Qatarian President Nasser Al-Khelaifi with the way Mbappe broke off his contract to sign real for real, and refused a transfer fee for them.
A bitter legal dispute has taken place between the parties since then. Mbappe claimed that he was due to 55 million euros in unpaid wages and bonuses from his magic in Paris.
The most recent turn came only this week when one of Mbappe’s AFP lawyers announced that the France captain withdrew a complaint about moral harassment against its former employers.
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After the public prosecutor had found that an investigation of the player was opened after a complaint by the player, as he was treated by PSG in the summer of 2023.
He believes that he had to get out of PSG and train with players who wanted to unload the club after refusing to agree a new contract.
Mbappe missed a pre-season tour to Japan and the beginning of the next campaign before it was finally integrated into Luis Enriques squad.
All of this should have been behind Mbappe a long time ago, since his first season went on a personal level at Real.
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The 26-year-old, a World Cup winner in 2018, scored 43 goals for his new club in all competitions until the end of the campaign in La Liga, a remarkable balance.
However, Mbappe was frustrated at the World Cup and did not carry it at all during the group phase due to a stomach cake, which led to it that he needed hospital treatment.
– First start? – –
In his absence, the young striker Gonzalo Garcia took the step in an impressive way, started all five games in the USA and scored four goals.
The last of them was the start of the 3-2 quarter-finals against Borussia Dortmund in the Metlife Stadium on Saturday, but it was Mbappe who ultimately had the decisive goal.
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In the middle of the second half he came from the bank and achieved a brilliant, acrobatic kick for Real’s third of the afternoon in the meantime.
“He is still not perfect, not 100 percent, but he gets better every day,” said Alonso after this game about Mbappe.
“Now he will have three days to continue making ahead before the semi -finals and feel better.”
It is difficult to imagine that Mbappe won his first start of the tournament against PSG, the club, which won the Champions League in the season, after his departure after so many years of disappointment in Europe in the team in the season.
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PSG came to the USA 5-0 in the Champions League final.
They reached the last four with a 2-0 victory against Bayern Munich in Atlanta in the last eight o’clock, Willian Pacho and Lucas Hernandez-and don’t have to be really afraid.
“It doesn’t matter who we play in the semi -finals. Everything that matters is that we are there and that we want to come to the final,” said Luis Enrique, for whom this is also a special occasion, since he spent five years at Madrid as a player in the 1990s.
Alonso, as a real trainer, took over after an excellent magic with Bayer Leverkusen and already showed great tactical flexibility that fluttered at the tournament between one back four and a three-way central defense.
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It will be fascinating to see which system he chooses here, and if Mbappe begins when he is preparing to play against PSG for the first time since July 2017 when he was an exciting teenager in Monaco.
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