Rumour Mongering: Real Madrid Consider Haaland as Mbappé Alternative

Photo by Aurelien Meunier - PSG/PSG via Getty Images

It’s never going to happen, but the rumour mongers are setting up a Mbappé to Liverpool/Haaland to Madrid narrative that is at least amusing.

The Kylian Mbappé saga has long since grown tiresome, even for a club and fanbase like Liverpool that by any reasonable expectation live on the fringes of the seasons-long will-he-or-won’t-he between the 25-year-old French star and Real Madrid.

So far, every rumoured deadline and transfer window has passed with the fundamentals unchanged. Mabppé is a Paris Saint-Germain player. Mbappé is Real Madrid’s top target. If Mbappé doesn’t join now, Madrid will move on. Then he doesn’t. And they don’t.

And here we are yet again. Madrid have set a rumoured January 15th deadline. And after years of churning through the same story over and over again, this time around Mbappé is down to the final months of his PSG contract and free to sign a pre-contract.

Only the Madrid-based press are making doubtful noises. Saying Mbappé isn’t giving Los Blancos the encouragement they might have expected. And that, as so often has been the case in this saga, that Liverpool are waiting in the wings just in case.

They’re also saying this time around that Madrid are beginning to explore alternatives. That a top striker is a top priority for the coming summer, and so if Mbappé won’t sign on now that he can, the Spanish giants will turn their attentions elsewhere.

In particular, that they’ll turn their attentions to Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, a truly generational scorer but otherwise more limited player than Mbappé. And while it’s not their primary focus, that would then set up a potential Liverpool move for Mbappé.

We can only issue a tired sigh given we’ve been suffering through this exhausting Mbappé song and dance since before Covid. Still, the idea of a world where Haaland joins Madrid while Mbappé comes to Liverpool and City are left in the cold does amuse.

Realistically, perhaps, we actually have come to the point where Mbappé has to move on from PSG—he is out of contract in the summer, after all—but it’s hard to do anything but roll our eyes any time his name and Liverpool get mentioned in the same story.