Paris St-Germain have rejected Real Madrid’s £137m bid for France forward Kylian Mbappe, the 22 year-old World Cup winner, who joined PSG in 2017 and his contract expires in June 2022.

PSG sporting director Leonardo said the club would “not hold Mbappe back” but considered Real Madrid’s bid to be “not sufficient”.

“We consider the offer as being very far from what Kylian is worth today,” he told a French radio station.

“If a player wants to leave it must be under our terms. This applies not just to Kylian but to all players.

“If he wants to go, we are not going to hold him back, but it is on our terms.”

Mbappe has scored 133 goals in 174 games for PSG and won three Ligue 1 titles and three French Cups.

Real lost 300m euros in revenue due to the ravages of Covid-19 and have only signed defender David Alaba on a free transfer from Bayern Munich this summer.

Los Blancos lost Sergio Ramos to PSG on a free transfer, Raphael Varane to Manchester United for £34m and Martin Odegaard to Arsenal for around £30m.

Real evidently feel sufficiently confident about their finances to make an approach for one of the most highly-rated players in the world, who PSG want to keep as they see him as being at “the centre of the project” at the Paris club.

“Kylian feels like leaving, this seems clear to me – our goal is to extend and keep him,” Leonardo added.

“With him, we talked a lot, he always told us the same things. He always promised he wouldn’t leave the club free.

“It [Real’s bid] is less than we paid for him. But it’s the way Real Madrid does it that we don’t like.”

It is not known how the fee would be structured. PHOTO/COURTESY