Real Madrid’s pursuit of Kylian Mbappe started so long ago, his soon to be new team-mate Jude Bellingham was still at school when the first offer was made.

It was July 2017 and Bellingham was a 14-year-old (already playing for Birmingham’s under-18s). 

Mbappe was an 18-year-old sensation who had just taken Monaco to the semi-finals of the Champions League scoring six goals en-route.

What they didn’t know was that they would have to wait seven years to sign him.

Real Madrid have wanted to sign Kylian Mbappe since he was a young star at Monaco in 2017

They wanted him to replace Cristiano Ronaldo when he left in 2018 but have been made to wait

The opening bid

Marca’s deputy editor Carlos Carpio, who has now confirmed that Mbappe has agreed a five-year deal, reported a bid of €180m (£154m) back in 2017. It was a stratospheric fee and Monaco owner Dimitri Rybolovlev seemed happy for Mbappe to join the Spanish club. 

But Madrid were only offering €7m (£6m) net a season to the player and Paris Saint-Germain were willing and able to pay him more than double that in wages.

They were also able to come to an agreement with Monaco to take the player on loan for a season and buy him the following year. That helped them swerve the financial fair play police monitoring them because they had just bought Neymar from Barcelona for €222m (£190m).

Madrid had been banking on the fact that Mbappe used to have posters of Cristiano Ronaldo on his bedroom wall as a kid, and that another one of his idols Zinedine Zidane was their coach. What no one fully grasped then was that Mbappe and his mother Fayza Lamari were not sentimentalists – they went where the money was.

PSG had the bottomless pit of cash and various ways of evading attempts to limit them spending it. Real Madrid consoled themselves with the fact that they still had Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema and had just won the Champions League against Juventus, their third in four years.

They could afford to play the long game and it was not until two years down the line when they came close to signing him once more, this time with Mbappe sowing the seeds of doubt over his future in Paris.

PSG managed to sign Mbappe on an initial loan from Monaco, meaning they were in no rush to sell him after spending £190m on Neymar in 2017

The 2019 offensive (Blame it on Bale)

It was at a French football awards ceremony in May of 2019 when Mbappe declared: ‘I have reached a time in my career when I need to have more responsibility. I hope it will be at PSG, or maybe it will be somewhere else with a new project.’ That was interpreted as a nod and several winks in Madrid’s direction and the Spanish club wanted to respond but their hands were tied.

The player was under contract until 2022 and PSG issued a statement that read: ‘Strong ties bind Paris Saint-Germain and Kylian Mbappe and our story will continue next season.’

It was very much ‘blame Gareth Bale for everything’ at the time and a story circulated that Bale’s refusal to move to Manchester United had scuppered the move making Mbappe doubt he would get first team minutes at Madrid.

The failure to land him seemed to have more to do with PSG not needing to sell and Mbappe never came out of it a loser. He got a pay-rise prompting some suspicions at Madrid that maybe they were being played.

For all the suspicions that Mbappe was using Madrid to get pay rises one thing he had stopped short of doing was renewing his contract. That meant that in the summer of 2020 he was in the last two year of his deal and Madrid felt a sense of renewed confidence he would soon be theirs.

Gareth Bale was blamed in 2019 for Madrid not getting Mbappe, as it was reported that his refusal to join Man United led to Mbappe staying at PSG

PSG reject £171m offer

In the summer of 2021 the player only had a year left and Madrid were emboldened enough to begin making official bids. 

In the last week of the summer window they bid €170m (£145m) but received no reply from PSG. Then on deadline day they lodged a second offer, this time of €200m (£171m), but again they were met with the sound of silence. 

He would have become the second most expensive player in history behind Neymar had he signed for that fee. Madrid put the £171m back in the safe and vowed to wait another year. Surely in 2022 he would be theirs for free.

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez was willing to pay £171m for Mbappe in 2021

PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi (pictured) did not even respond to Madrid’s offer

The mother and father of all U-turns (Blame it on Macron)

The summer of 2022 would begin to test the patience of even the most Mbappe-mad Real Madrid supporter. His arrival seemed inevitable because he had run down his contract. 

But again Perez and company were foiled. Madrid were so convinced Mbappe was set to join on a free they had nothing signed.

He at least had the courtesy to tell Perez before it was made public that against all expectation he had agreed a two-year extension in Paris for a basic net salary of €25m (£21.4m). Madrid supporters were irate. 

Many blamed the player himself, others suggested French President Emmanuel Macron had turned Mbappe by meddling in the saga and filling his head with talk of doing what was best for France and the French league.

That seemed like the end of the soap opera but it was more just the beginning of a new chapter. Madrid had not sat on their hands during those years of waiting. 

Mbappe looked set to join Madrid in 2022, but performed a dramatic U-turn and signed a new deal at PSG instead

Madrid responded by building a young exciting squad including the likes of Jude Bellingham (right) and Vinicius Jr (left)

With super-scout Juni Calafat expertly working the European and South American markets they had assembled a squad of young players who were all coming into bloom at the same time. 

There was already less need for Mbappe with the likes of Rodrygo Goes, Vinicius, Fede Valverde and Eduardo Camavinga at the club. And then in the summer of 2023 they hit the jackpot paying €103m (£88m) for Jude Bellingham. 

His extraordinary first season – currently outscoring everyone in Spain – meant that not only did Madrid have a great team without Mbappe, they also had a global icon who would be the face of the club for years to come.

Did they still want Mbappe? You bet they did, but now it could be on their terms. They were no longer as desperate as they had been in the past.

The home straight and the 2024 capture

The tactic was now all about waiting to see if Mbappe would make the first move. And being sure not to upset PSG in the process. 

In November of last year Real Madrid even went to the lengths of issuing a statement to deny they had already sat down with the player a month before he would have been free to negotiate.

After a seven-year pursuit, Madrid are finally set to sign Mbappe this summer

And then, at last, this month, the player told PSG he was leaving Paris. And Madrid have since briefed confirmation that he has agreed terms on a deal to join them. 

He will be the Spanish club’s top-earner but on a wage well below the £21.4m he cleared in Paris and without that £171m fee Madrid once offered. They will have to pay him a signing on fee for close to €100m (£85.5m). 

But they consider it money well spent. It’s a seven-year itch, and they have finally scratched it.