Abline joins Monaco for 25 million euros as relegated Nantes set a Ligue 2 record

Monaco signed Matthis Abline from Nantes on Thursday, and the numbers involved say more about Nantes’ summer than about Monaco’s. The fee is 25 million euros with another five million in performance add-ons, and the 23-year-old forward has signed until June 2031. For a club that has just been relegated to Ligue 2, that is a very good day at the office.

A record sale, and not by a little

Abline is the biggest sale in Nantes’ history. He is also, according to the reporting around the deal, the biggest sale any Ligue 2 club has made. The previous Nantes record was Nathan Zézé, who went to NEOM for 20 million euros, so this clears it by half again.

Relegated clubs usually get picked apart at a discount, because everyone in the market knows they have to sell and knows the player wants out. Nantes held a price and got it. Thirty million total for a forward who scored six league goals in a relegated side is not the sale of a club being squeezed.

What Monaco are getting

Abline scored eight goals and made seven assists in 35 appearances across last season, in a side that went down. The year before that he was Nantes’ top scorer with 11 goals and two assists, which is the season that built his price.

He came through the Rennes academy, made his Ligue 1 debut in April 2021, and had loan spells at Le Havre in 2021-22 and Auxerre in 2022-23, where he got nine goals from 38 games between the two. He was part of the France side that reached the semi-finals of the 2025 European Under-21 Championship.

At Monaco he joins a forward line that already has Folarin Balogun in it. Whether that is competition or a partnership is the interesting question, and it is the sort of thing that tends to sort itself out over a first month rather than in a press release.

Monaco are selling too

This does not happen in isolation. Monaco have agreed to sell Maghnes Akliouche to Paris Saint-Germain for a reported 50 million euros after turning down several earlier bids, with the details still being tied up. Akliouche made seven goals and 10 assists in 43 games last season, so Monaco are losing their most creative player and have gone out and bought a forward with the money.

That is a reasonable trade if Abline can carry a bigger share of the scoring than he did at Nantes, where the service was thinner and the team was going down. It is a worse one if Monaco discover that what they actually miss is the passer. Ligue 1 starts back on 23 August, so there is not long to wait for a first read.

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