Akliouche wanted Paris all summer, and PSG finally paid 50 million euros for him
Monaco turned down repeated offers and Liverpool never got close, but the France international had settled on Paris long before the fee did.
Aug 7, 2026
PSG announced it on Thursday, hours after Maghnes Akliouche finished his medical: a five-year deal to 2031, the number 11 shirt, and roughly 50 million euros going the other way to Monaco. One of the summer’s longest-running French transfer sagas ended the way most people expected it to back in June, several rejected offers later than PSG would have liked.
“Signing for Paris Saint-Germain is an immense source of pride,” the 24-year-old said. “Having grown up in the Paris region, joining such a prestigious club means so much to me and my family.”
Monaco kept sending the offers back
This was not a quick negotiation. Monaco rejected a 45 million euro bid earlier in the window and held their line through several more approaches, with PSG returning again and again rather than walking away, which is not how the European champions usually behave once a selling club digs in.
Liverpool were the complication. They made an approach of their own and got nowhere, partly on price and mostly because Akliouche had been clear for weeks that Paris was where he wanted to go. Anfield would have offered him more minutes and a bigger role in the side. He wanted the club down the road from Tremblay-en-France, the Seine-Saint-Denis town he was born in and left as a 15-year-old for Monaco’s academy.
He goes back north with 139 Monaco appearances, 23 goals and 28 assists behind him, built across five senior seasons that took him from a substitute’s debut against Lyon in October 2021 to a France call-up, a competitive international bow off the bench against Ukraine, and a place in the squad at this summer’s World Cup.
The gap he is filling
Kang-in Lee left for Atletico Madrid in July for 40 million euros, and Akliouche walks into something close to that role. He is an attacking midfielder by trade who has spent most of his Monaco career wide on the right, drifting inside, comfortable receiving with his back to pressure and willing to run at a defender rather than recycle the ball sideways. Luis Enrique has never been short of attacking bodies. What he asks of them is specific, and the out-of-possession side of Akliouche’s game should travel better than his highlight reel suggests.
The step up is real, though. Monaco were happy to build around him. PSG will not be. He arrives at a club that has won the Champions League in each of the last two seasons, the second of them on penalties against Arsenal in Budapest on 30 May after a 1-1 draw, with a front line where nobody keeps a shirt on reputation.
Gothenburg first, Rennes after
He could get his first minutes almost immediately. PSG face Manchester United in a friendly at the Ullevi in Gothenburg on Saturday, kicking off at 4pm BST, and the club expect him to be involved.
The competitive start comes on 22 August, when Rennes visit the Parc des Princes on Ligue 1’s opening weekend. That is the one worth waiting for. A boy from the northeastern suburbs in the 11 shirt, in front of a crowd that has spent a decade being sold expensive attackers from everywhere else, gets one kind of reception if the first touch comes off and a very different one if it does not.