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Kylian Mbappe confirmed the worst-kept secret in football Friday, announcing he’s leaving Paris Saint-Germain at the end of the season.

Mbappe’s contract with PSG officially expires June 30.

“I will not extend and the adventure will come to an end in a few weeks,” Mbappe said in a video posted on X. “I will play my last game at the Parc des Princes on Sunday (against Toulouse).”

Real Madrid are now set to land the World Cup winner on a free transfer this summer. Mbappe reportedly agreed to personal terms with Los Blancos in February.

Mbappe has spent his entire career in Ligue 1, making his senior debut with AS Monaco in 2015 and winning the league with the principality side in 2017 before collecting 14 more domestic titles over seven seasons with PSG.

He’ll add one more to his trophy haul if PSG beat Lyon in the French Cup final on May 25, his final appearance for the club.

Mbappe didn’t mention Madrid in his farewell post but indicated he would play outside France next season.

“It’s hard, and I never thought it would be this difficult to announce that, to leave my country, France, Ligue 1, a championship I’ve always known, but I think I needed this, after seven years, a new challenge,” he added.

His announcement is something of a formality. Mbappe initially signaled his intention to leave last summer when he declined an option in his contract to extend his time at the club until June 2025. PSG subsequently dropped the 25-year-old from its preseason tour of Asia and forced him to train with the reserve team before reinstating him to the senior squad.

At that time, PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi said it was “impossible” to allow Mbappe to leave the club on a free transfer. Despite holding “positive” talks with the player – reportedly offering him a raise on top of his already-gargantuan €72-million gross salary – the side couldn’t persuade him to extend.

PSG signed Mbappe from Monaco in 2017 for €180 million and, while he’s scored a club-record 255 goals in 306 appearances for the Ligue 1 giants, he couldn’t help them win the one competition that’s eluded them: the Champions League. Mbappe was held scoreless as Borussia Dortmund eliminated Les Parisiens in the semifinals on Tuesday. Mbappe and Co. also fell short in the 2020 final against Bayern Munich.

“It’s a lot of emotions,” the French star continued, “many years where I had the chance and the great honor to be a member of the biggest French club, one of the best in the world, which allowed me to arrive here, to have my first experience in a club with a lot of pressure, to grow as a player, of course, by being alongside some of the best in history, some of the greatest champions, to meet a lot of people, to grow as a man as well, with all the glory and mistakes I’ve made.”

Madrid have been chasing Mbappe’s signature for the past years. He appeared set to join the Spanish outfit in 2022 but instead signed an extension with PSG. That deal included a €150-million signing bonus and required the persuasive powers of French President Emmanuel Macron.

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GENEVA (AP) — FIFA offered peace talks to the global networks of player unions and domestic leagues on Friday after they threatened legal action about soccer’s congested international calendar.

FIFPRO and the World Leagues Association aired long-held frustrations at FIFA adding new and bigger events — including a revamped 32-team Club World Cup next year and a 48-team men’s World Cup in 2026 — without fully consulting their members, they claimed.

The 2024-25 schedule in European soccer also will be squeezed by UEFA expanding its three main club competitions, including a Champions League format with 36 teams. UEFA club events will occupy 10 midweeks of fixtures dates, including two new ones in January, instead of the current six.

FIFA defended its role in managing the international calendar in writing to both soccer organizations, offering to “identify suitable dates and locations” for a meeting, in a letter seen by The Associated Press.

All parties should meet in London on the sidelines of the Champions League final on June 1 at Wembley Stadium. Real Madrid plays Borussia Dortmund in a marquee game typically attended by FIFA president Gianni Infantino.

A meeting is possible in the pause between club seasons, later in June into mid-July, FIFA interim secretary general Mattias Grafstrom wrote in the letter.

Grafstrom pushed back on claims FIFA prioritized its business interests over the well-being of players and domestic leagues, and questioned if FIFPRO and World Leagues had threatened legal action against other competition organizers.

FIFA was responsible, Grafstrom wrote, for “a fractional amount of the total elite club games around the world,” and had a duty to reinvest its billions of dollars of revenue in developing the game in 211 member federations.

He added, “While we disagree with the tenor and content of your letter, we have nonetheless taken note of your concerns and are more than happy to continue our ongoing dialogue on this important topic.”

Key FIFA decisions and projects in recent years have emerged since May 2021 when it shut down the Football Stakeholders Committee that included union and league officials, plus representative of clubs and national federations.

That panel was created four years earlier to debate and prepare changes to soccer regulations and competitions.

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GENEVA (AP) — FIFA has been warned of legal action from players and national leagues if it does not backtrack on adding new and bigger competitions to the congested calendar of men’s international soccer.

FIFA is criticized for “unilateral decisions that benefit its own competitions and commercial interests” — including the World Cup and expanded 32-team Club World Cup that debuts next year — in a letter sent by global players union FIFPRO and the World Leagues Association seen on Thursday by The Associated Press.

The letter claims it is “inherently abusive” for FIFA to continue adding games while forcing players and leagues to adapt.

FIFA is urged to reschedule the revamped Club World Cup due in the United States in June 2025. The lineup includes Champions League finalists Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund plus Manchester City and Bayern Munich.

That month-long tournament will test stadiums and logistics for the first 48-team, 104-game men’s World Cup staged one year later across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The unions and leagues also want FIFA to “review its decision” — effectively scrap — the Intercontinental Cup set for this December involving the same continental champions that will play in the Club World Cup six months later.

Talks also should reopen on the FIFA-managed calendar through 2030 when clubs must release players for national team games, they wrote.

“FIFA has ignored repeated attempts by leagues and unions to engage on this issue,” FIFPRO and World Leagues said, aiming to step up pressure before the soccer body’s ruling council and congress of 211 member federations meet next week in Bangkok, Thailand.

“Should FIFA refuse to formally commit to resolving the issues, as set out above, at its upcoming council, we shall be compelled to advise our members on the options available to them, both individually and collectively, to proactively safeguard their interests,” the letter stated.

“These options include legal action against FIFA on which we have now commissioned external expert advice,” FIFPRO and Zurich-based World Leagues warn.

FIFA has been contacted for comment.

Player workloads and domestic fixture schedules also are being squeezed by UEFA’s expansion of its three season-long club competitions.

Teams in the Champions League and Europa League next season will play two guaranteed extra games in an opening-stage schedule running from September through January instead of December, using 10 midweeks instead of six across the three competitions.

“Players are being pushed beyond their limits, with significant injury risks and impacts on their welfare and fundamental rights,” FIFPRO and World Leagues warn, adding the fixture squeeze is harming the ability of leagues to organize properly.

FIFA conservatively budgeted for more than $11 billion in revenue from 2023-26 — about a 50% increase from the previous four years — that did not include money from the inaugural Club World Cup expansion and a top-tier sponsorship confirmed last month with Saudi Arabian state oil firm Aramco. More Saudi sponsorship is expected with the kingdom set to host the 2024 men’s World Cup.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino has consistently said the extra money and playing opportunities are needed to raise the level of teams from outside Europe and South America, which traditionally dominate the World Cup and other international events.

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When Nasser Al-Khelaifi’s Qatar Sports Investment acquired Paris Saint-Germain in 2011, the club’s new president mapped out a five-year plan for Champions League glory, as if winning a knockout tournament was only a matter of arithmetic and probability scales. They signed the best players money could buy and went through them like bubble gum, discarding one after another for the next-best flavor. The years went by without them getting any closer, but when they landed Kylian Mbappe, PSG thought they had finally bought their ticket to the dance.

Now, as QSI’s 13th year as majority owners of PSG comes and goes without a Champions League trophy locked inside their cabinet doors, as Mbappe, the crown jewel of their multi-billion-euro enterprise, exits right, and as Borussia Dortmund, without Erling Haaland or Jude Bellingham, beat them to this year’s final, France’s bougiest club must grapple not just with the familiar gut punch of humiliation, but with the reality that their stated goal is far from guaranteed.

That the Bundesliga’s fifth-place team will play June 1 at Wembley Stadium is a slap in the face to a club like PSG that wields transfer funds like hush money ahead of trial. They have spent with impunity, buying up players without really knowing where to put them on the field, hoarding them so other teams can’t have them. They have lost hundreds of millions of euros in recent seasons but somehow escaped the wrath of UEFA’s financial watchdog. They’ve filtered through some of the best coaches in the game and eschewed high-maintenance stars for moldable young talent, an admirable, if not risk-free pursuit. (Just ask Chelsea.)

But nothing has changed their results in Europe.

It’s beautiful that football these days can still produce a Champions League finalist like Dortmund, a team usually content to have a seat at the table. With a tight budget and system designed to flip players for a profit, Dortmund are transient, always in flux, and a place where trophies are wanted, not demanded. And Dortmund are a big club. The Yellow Wall, a steep block of more than 20,000 supporters, sends chills down the spine of anyone who visits the Westfalenstadion. There’s a sense of purpose there. Dortmund aren’t aimlessly wandering through competitions. They have the desire to compete and win. But they don’t have PSG’s delusions of grandeur.

That’s not a criticism of Les Parisiens. They are who they are, a fashion brand fronted by extremely good athletes who oftentimes play good football. Luis Enrique, the latest manager to sit on the hot seat, has at least assembled some coherence in the team, establishing possession as a cardinal rule. He even sat out Mbappe once the club learned he would exercise his right to leave at the end of the season.

There’s no one bigger than PSG, and yet, who are they really? They have stores in New York, Toronto, Miami, Tokyo, and many other tourist destinations. They have a team that regularly wins Ligue 1, where they can bully opponents with a fraction of the budget over a much longer 34-game season. They have limitless funds tied to Qatar’s oil-rich ruling family. They have a president whose friendship with UEFA counterpart Aleksander Ceferin and oversized influence on the European Club Association seem to keep PSG in good standing. They have everything, except the one thing they’ve been seeking this whole time.

Football is a funny game, and today’s conversation could’ve been different had PSG converted any of the four shots that rattled against the post during Tuesday’s 1-0 semifinal second-leg loss. None of it would’ve been a conversation at all had they played to their potential in the 2020 Champions League final they lost to Bayern Munich.

But that’s the point: It’s hard to have such a black-and-white view of success. Pep Guardiola went 10 years without making the Champions League final and 12 before winning it again. That didn’t make him a bad manager. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, formerly PSG’s all-time leading scorer, and his idol, Brazilian phenomenon Ronaldo, didn’t win it all. That doesn’t diminish their legendary status. Winning a knockout tournament is much more than simple addition. It’s luck and it’s timing. It’s about good matchups, and sometimes capturing lighting in a bottle. And sometimes the very best team wins.

Al-Khelaifi took over the club all those years ago to be the best in Europe – and reap the rewards that such prestige would grant his native Qatar in their eternal search for acceptance in the Western world – but PSG have in many ways accomplished more than what a single Champions League win would ever offer. They are globally recognized, a destination for touring A-list celebrities, linked with pretty much anyone that matters in the game, and now, a real part of the European football establishment.

Mbappe’s helped them achieve a special place in the consciousness of the average football fan but also of anyone who’s ever walked by their stores, watched highlights, or heard about him scoring a hat-trick in a World Cup final. He’s won games on his own and scored three, four, and five goals in a single 90 minutes of football for PSG. He has fronted one of the biggest sports power plays in history.

Losing him hurts. But it also allows PSG to ask themselves who they really want to be and what it will take to get there. The plan actually matters now.