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PSG like Rafael Leao, but they’re not preparing to replace Kylian Mbappe just yet
Rafael Leao has again been linked as a summer transfer target for PSG, and he’s a name we’ve seen come up on their radar before. Still, for this summer a lot will depend on what PSG need to do regarding Kylian Mbappe and where that situation is by then.
I understand Leao has been of interest to PSG in the past, and there’s the connection there with Luis Campos, who has worked with him before, having signed him at Lille. Still, his form has suffered a little recently, and that’s something that has to be factored in, though I think the fact that Campos knows him well could count in his favour.
We’ll have to see if it’s a deal PSG can make work and it’s definitely one to keep an eye on, but I also wouldn’t be surprised this summer if PSG reassess their attacking options after a first full season with a lot of new signings playing together. We saw Randal Kolo Muani, Goncalo Ramos and Bradley Barcola join in the summer, and there’s already a potential situation with Ramos that might require a solution at the end of the season. Or we could obviously see Mbappe leave and that might create more of an opportunity for Ramos.
I can’t really see a world in which PSG have Mbappe and Leao in the same team, but then again if Mbappe does stay and make a more permanent move into a central role, it could be something that Luis Enrique can make work. Overall, though, I’d say it leaves more questions than answers. A lot can change between now and the end of the season, and the historic link between Campos and Leao could be a factor, but it would be a big-money expense and PSG might decide it’s better to focus that elsewhere.
Midfield, for instance, is an area that will probably be looked at, and we’ve seen PSG linked with Bruno Guimaraes – I don’t see that story going away. It will all be defined by the second half of PSG’s season and how it all plays out, and then of course on what Mbappe decides to do.
I wouldn’t say that PSG are preparing for the worst with Mbappe right now – they’re pretty well stocked in attack anyway, and if anything if Mbappe were to decide to leave it would give them greater clarity on who they would want to continue with and what role they’d give to those players.
We’ve already seen rumours about Marco Asensio, for instance, so there are players like him and Ramos who have issues with game time. Randal Kolo Muani’s form is also a bit of a concern and there’s a question mark over whether he really fits, so there’s a lot of work that needs to be done there, and that’s whether Mbappe stays or not. It’s therefore a little hard for PSG to prepare for life without Mbappe now as they very much hope for him to stay, so until all avenues have been exhausted and they know for definite that he’s not going to stay, I don’t think PSG are going to start putting plans in place for a replacement.
There’s also a change of culture going on at the club, which means that they basically already have their next star name coming through anyway in the form of Warren Zaire-Emery, so I’m not sure there’d be a big rush for a marquee signing like Leao to replace Mbappe even if he did decide to move on.
If Luis Enrique is going to be there for the long term, a lot of the focus will be on working out which players fit into his plans. They had a very bloated squad that needed thinning out over the last couple of years and so they’ll be keen to avoid over-spending and ending up in that kind of situation again.
So, overall, I don’t see PSG necessarily looking for a like-for-like replacement for Mbappe, it will be more of a case of continuing this cultural shift that we’ve seen being put into place over the last couple of years.
What next for Karim Benzema after failing to secure return to Europe?
Karim Benzema’s future has been the subject of much discussion this January and it’s been suggested that another solution could be found for him at a different Saudi club. My understanding, however, is that he would have rather gone back to Europe – I don’t think the issues he’s having where he is at this moment in time would be solved by another move, especially a temporary one, within the Saudi Pro League.
For Benzema, it’s more that he wants to be back at a more familiar stage and style of football. There’s a desire to stay at the top level of football for the time he has left in his career, and Lyon held a special attraction as they were his first club and it presented an opportunity to come back to France.
It was a complicated deal for Lyon to work out, however, especially as Lyon had other pieces to put together to try their best to stay in Ligue 1. With Lyon, there was special interest from a special club, and that’s why Benzema was willing to listen, but I think in an ideal world he’d have rather returned to Lyon when they were still competing in Europe. If something like that comes up at the last minute then let’s see what happens, but at the time of writing it seems unlikely that anything is going to surface and that’s why, even though relations are a little tense at Al Ittihad, it seems most likely that this is just going to have to continue until it can be revisited in the summer.
Staying with Lyon, Nemanja Matic looks like an interesting signing from Rennes, and the team should benefit from his experience. It bolsters their options in that position but also gives them perhaps a better mix of characters to help them climb up the Ligue 1 table.
Things went sour surprisingly quickly for Matic at Rennes – he was sold a vision of how things were going to go for the club that didn’t turn into reality. There was also a change of manager, and things haven’t really worked out on the pitch, so he decided to move on and Lyon saw that opportunity to get them the kind of character who could be key for them.
It’s been disappointing for all parties involved that the Rennes move didn’t work out as expected, but it looks a good get for Lyon and I think it’ll help this squad that has been in need of leadership figures.
Bayern Munich steal a march on rivals to sign Sacha Boey
Sacha Boey has completed a move from Galatasaray to Bayern Munich this January and it looks like a good step up for him. Of course we know Bayern looked at other options such as Kieran Trippier and we also know that Boey had admirers in the Premier League and elsewhere. Bayern probably started out intending to make more of a short-term move, but once those became problematic I can see why Boey looked like a tempting option. A number of other clubs will likely be disappointed to see that he’s joined Bayern and is no longer available.
It’s a challenging move for Boey but one that I think can get the best out of him. For the long-term I think it’s a good fit for Bayern as well – they’ve done well to do this now as it means they’ve almost certainly stolen a march on a few other clubs who would have liked to do this deal in the summer.
It’s rare that we see top European clubs making long-term permanent moves like this in January, and it’s certainly been the case this year in comparison to last winter when we saw Chelsea and others spending big. But the circumstances perhaps demanded it at Bayern, and it will be interesting to see now how he responds to the pressure of hitting the ground running and showing himself to be a good acquisition in the long term.