Luis Campos and Kylian Mbappé have always been close since the first participated in the development of the second at AS Monaco. It was the Portuguese who pushed to see the prodigy join the ASM first team when Leonado Jardim was hesitant to play him. He ended up winning his case, taking everyone in his wake, the coach, but also the entire staff, the locker room, who quickly understood the extent of the phenomenon, and of course the club, which ended up selling him for €180 million to PSG in the summer of 2017, on loan with a purchase option lifted a year later.
But there was this brutal break with the Ile-de-France residents in the summer of 2024, when the striker left for Real Madrid free of any contract. 10 months earlier, PSG had put him in the closet in his loft to force him to extend, or leave. There will be a good start, with losses and clashes and the relationship with PSG will end at the industrial tribunal. The club ended up being ordered to settle the unpaid debts it owed to its former star: €61 million. “I have a special relationship with Kylian since he was 14 or 15, I’m not going to forget it and I’m not going to hide it, but in this case I tried to be as less emotional as possible, I tried to be as rational as possible», explains Luis Campos.
“we couldn’t let the whole club pay for the Kylian affair»
In an interview given to Marcathe Parisian sports director admits having had to put his special relationship aside, due to the legal proceedings between his former protégé and his current employer. “I always thought about protecting the team and the other players, we couldn’t let the whole club pay for the Kylian affair, as good as Kylian Mbappé ishe continues. My concern, that of the coach and the club management, was to make others feel important. We managed to manage something emotional, because Kylian remains the captain of France, he remains the player he is, but at the same time, we had to protect the club and all those who agreed to join the PSG project.»
The choice of the collective prevailed over the individual, like what PSG is achieving today with Luis Enrique and which bore fruit last May with victory in the Champions League. Nothing to regret the departure of Mbappé, after those a year earlier already, of Messi and Neymar. “We had great players with very high salaries, with our financial fair play, there was a difficult situation and today we have a PSG with a very good economic situation, reducing the wage bill immensely, we are even more competitive because we have also changed the philosophy and the way of thinking of all Parisians and of PSG.» It is also a stone thrown into Mbappé’s garden.
