Saudi Arabian football team Al-Hilal made a record €300m bid for Kylian Mbappe on Monday after missing Lionel Messi.

Paris Saint-Germain approved the offer for his player and allowed Al-Hilal to initiate direct negotiations with Mbappe.

The 2018 World Cup winner is in a contract stalemate with PSG after deciding not to exercise the 12-month extension option on his contract. Instead, he plans to leave as a free agent when he is expected to join Real Madrid at the end of next season.

Earlier this year, Al-Hilal failed to sign Messi and the Argentine star chose to join Inter Miami instead.

The bid for Mbappe would make him the most expensive player in history, surpassing the €236.5 million PSG paid for Neymar, who transferred from Barcelona in 2017.

Earlier this year, Al-Hilal failed in his attempt to sign Messi, and the Argentine star chose to join Inter Miami instead.

The offer represents Saudi Arabia’s most ambitious move yet, as part of a determined recruitment drive to attract the game’s biggest players to the country.

But critics have described recent efforts as “sports washing”, trying to leverage professional sports to clean up the image of the kingdom, which remains one of the world’s top practitioners and has waged a decades-long war in Yemen.