Lionel Messi covers his mouth – the fashion of these eras on soccer fields – to make a comment to Kylian Mbappé. Only they know what they are saying, but the reactions say everything. The complicity. The Frenchman bursts out laughing while the Argentinean accompanies him with a pronounced smile. The supposed hurricane has passed. The rumors of the storm weathered. The stars live this end of the season –and their stay?– with what seems to be the best moment of the relationship between the two. Those old sparks between Kiki and some of those closest to Leo in the dressing room seem to have been forgotten. It is true that voices of a bad relationship between the two had never been heard, but neither did they seem to have such a close bond.
The 2-1 victory over Angers, which left PSG one step away from winning Ligue 1, had yet another installment of that link on and off the field. Leo was essential for Kylian to score both goals. Messi is the tournament’s assist leader (15) and Mbappé the top scorer (22). One is synonymous with the other. And in France, after the extensive defeat against Rosario in different sections of these two years as a Parisian player, they begin to regret his departure in advance.
Six dates from the end of the championship, the starting feeling of Rosario is already getting stronger and the newspaper L’Equipe stated: “Mbappé will miss Messi”. The journalist Arnaud Hermant acknowledged that Leo will not apply the contract extension until 2024 that he has available and reflected: “French football will regret it, PSG too, although it symbolizes, quite unfairly, in the eyes of a good part of its followers, the failure of the club’s policy in the last two years, considered too commercial to the detriment of sporting consistency.
Lionel’s landing in France also generated endless rumors of a split in the Parisian dressing room with Neymar on one side and Mbappé on the other. Messi, as a kind of intermediary, but always more related to the Brazilian due to his historical friendship. Qatar’s World Cup title in the Argentina-France final did nothing more than stretch that gap, at least in the public eye. There were even some events that drew attention such as Kiki’s vacation when they had to receive Leo or the lack of a tribute to the world champion in the stadium.
Everything changed. The gestures on the court also expose it. “There is another who will undoubtedly regret Messi’s departure, and that is Mbappé”, they recognized without lapsing in the aforementioned medium. “Without Ney, La Pulga and KM search for each other excessively and sometimes give the sensation of passing the ball to another teammate only when they have no other choice. It is understandable, they speak the same football and are from the same galaxy”, they added.
The team added 106 goals this season. Kylian participated in 42 and Leo in 41. Both came together to score 19 times. And since they are teammates at the French club they have crossed 30 assists: 19 from La Pulga to Kiki and 11 with the reverse formula.
While this is developing, in Spain there is no talk of anything other than the dance of seduction that Barcelona performs to repatriate its greatest idol. The Catalan newspaper Mundo Deportivo, through its correspondent in France Dani Gil, affirms that Mbappé is still doing his job behind closed doors at PSG: “Mbappé, however, wants to convince Messi that at PSG they have a lot to do” . And he provides one more piece of information: “Since Neymar said goodbye to the season, Messi and Mbappé have been inseparable. They often walk together to the Camp des Loges training ground, an image that is repeated during PSG matches as well. The gestures between the two are good: laughter, confidences and, above all, a natural affinity on the pitch. The Frenchman wants the Argentine next to him because of how much he makes things easier for him in attack ”.
Things seem to be doomed today. Leo is on his way to dressing as a blaugrana player again. But he will leave France with the belated recognition for the quality of those outside of him who criticized him so much and of those themselves who smile for sharing the playing field with him. with Infobae