Kylian Mbappe signs five-year deal with Real Madrid as he joins 'club of my dreams'

France star will join Champions League and La Liga winners from July 1

Kylian Mbappe will join Real Madrid next month before heading off to Euro 2023 with France. AFP

Real Madrid have confirmed the signing of World Cup-winner Kylian Mbappe on a five-year deal.

The France striker will officially join the 15-time European champions on July 1, the day after his contract with Paris Saint-Germain expires.

Mbappe announced earlier this year he would leave PSG this summer. He has reported to have agreed a deal with Real until 2029, earning €15 million a season, plus a €150m signing-on bonus to be paid over five years, and he will keep a percentage of his image rights.

A statement from the Spanish club read: “Real Madrid and Kylian Mbappe have reached an agreement for him to be a Real Madrid player for the next five seasons.”

The confirmation makes official one of the worst-kept secrets in football with Mbappe having been strongly linked with a switch to the Bernabeu Stadium for several months.

Mbappe is currently with the France squad preparing for Euro 2024 and will formally link up with Real after his involvement in the tournament ends.

He will join a club on a high after they captured their record-extending 15th European title with victory over Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League final on Saturday. This came after they secured the La Liga crown last month.

Mbappe wrote on X: “A dream made reality. Very happy and proud to form part of the club of my dreams, Real Madrid.

“It is impossible to explain how happy and emotional I feel in this moment.”

The free transfer comes six years after Mbappe joined PSG from Monaco on a permanent deal for a reported €180m fee. He had already spent a season on loan at the Parc des Princes.

He won six Ligue 1 titles with PSG and scored 256 goals in 308 appearances for the club but Champions League glory eluded him. PSG reached the final in 2020 but finished runners-up to Bayern Munich and they lost at the last-four stage this year to Dortmund.

Mbappe’s resume also features winning the World Cup at 19, a World Cup final hat-trick at 23, seven La Ligue titles (he also won one at Monaco) and four French Cups.

When they won the World Cup in 2018, he was the second teenager after Pele to score in a World Cup final. Four years later, he was one of only two players in history to score a hat-trick in a final when France fell to Lionel Messi's Argentina.

The 25-year-old World Cup winner with France joins a Madrid team that is already loaded with talent and still celebrating its latest European triumph – and sixth in 10 seasons.

Mbappe joins a team that already features young stars in Vinicius Junior (aged 23), Rodrygo (23) and Jude Bellingham (20). They have also signed Brazilian teenager Endrick.

Madrid president Florentino Perez made signing Mbappe a strategic club priority since the Spanish powerhouse failed to lock him up when the player visited the club’s facilities at age 14.

He, instead, opted to join Monaco’s youth academy, and became a teenage sensation when he helped lead the Principality club to the Champions League semi-finals in 2017.

The Qatar-backed PSG turned down Madrid's 2021 bid, but with Mbappe’s contract expiring the next year, Madrid took it for granted that the attacker, who had never hid his desire to one day play for the Spanish club, would come south of the Pyrenees in 2022.

But French President Emmanuel Macron encouraged him to stay, and Mbappe stunned Perez and most of the football world by signing a contract extension to “continue his adventure” in Paris but said his move to Spain was “never over”.

And over it certainly was not. In February, coach Carlo Ancelotti was asked how he would accommodate Mbappe.

“Good players need to know how to play together. The important thing is to maintain a balance,” said the Italian. “For me, the most important things in a team are: quality and balance. If you can combine these two things, you'll be successful.”