Confined to the sidelines since his arrival at Leverkusen, the defender stood out for his Swedish stay with Mbappé. Wednesday evening, he returns to France to challenge Stade Brestois.
Almost missing from the radar since his departure from PSG this summer for Bayer Leverkusen on loan, Nordi Mukiele will face Brest in an already decisive match in the Champions League this Wednesday. The French international has returned to the forefront of the media scene recently and not for the right reasons.
The former right-back of the capital club was alongside Kylian Mbappé in Sweden during the controversial stay in Stockholm in which the captain of the Blues was targeted for a rape complaint. Worse, he is even the one who instigated this evening. Nordi Mukiele would be an acquaintance of Marco Djelevic, one of the five managers of the nightclub «V»a very selective club located in the center of the Swedish capital, he would have put the Real player and the managers in touch so that his former teammate would privatize part of the nightclub.
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If Mbappé took the full brunt of the media storm after the accusations, almost dismissing Mukiele, the Bayer Leverkusen player raises questions from the German press. Journalists questioned his coach Xabi Alonso last Friday during the club's press conference. After the match against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga, the Spanish tactician kicked off and briefly returned to his player's stay and situation.
“We spoke briefly about this with Nordi. He had benefited from four days of rest. He will not be punished for anything. He is part of the group against Frankfurt. I didn’t go into detail with him about this Swedish stay”. As against Frankfurt last weekend, Mukiele is in the group to face Brest but he should remain on the bench.
Failed debut in Germany
Arriving at Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2022, he quickly became friends with Kylian Mbappé and hopes to become a team executive to open the doors to the French team. But after a long injury in January 2023 and the arrival of Luis Enrique, the tricolor is relegated to the replacement position. Despite good entries and rather convincing performances, his playing time is increasingly reduced.
If he had long interested Bayern Munich in the winter of 2023, it was ultimately Bayer Leverkusen that he joined at the very end of the transfer window in the summer of 2024 on loan without a purchase option.
The reigning champion was looking for a solid player who had already played in the Bundesliga. Mukiele played there from 2018 to 2022 with RB Leipzig, the club which made him known.
But in Leverkusen the competition is tough against a formidable and stable defensive sector, which was the strength of the club's crazy season in 2023/24 (one defeat in 53 matches in all competitions, German championship title by only conceding 24 goals in 34 Bundesliga matches). Without any major defensive departure this summer, the player who passed through Paris FC finds himself on his right side in competition with the Dutch piston Jeremie Frimpong who is unstoppable.
Since his arrival, he has only played four minutes at the end of the match against Hoffenheim and had a catastrophic start at Wolfsburg. Despite his team's victory (4-3), he scored an own goal in the 5th minute and seemed overwhelmed and lacking rhythm in his right lane.
Versatile and capable of also playing in the center of a three-way defense, Mukiele is only his coach's 5th choice behind Jonathan Tah, Edmond Tapsoba, Piero Hincapié and Jeanuël Belocian. If no apparent sanction was given after his trip to Sweden, it is a safe bet that this start of controversy will not help the already complicated situation of the Ile-de-France resident with his new club.
