AS Monaco announced on Saturday that the contract of Wissam Ben Yedder will not be extended. The striker leaves the princely football club after five years and can leave for another club on a free transfer. He is the second-best top scorer in club history after Delio Onnis, with 118 goals in 201 official matches for Monaco, including 98 goals in Ligue 1. Ben Yedder’s departure had been in the air for a few months, as both parties seemed unwilling to renew the contract that expires on June 30. According to insiders, this also had to do with the unclear outcome of a legal matter, in which Ben Yedder would be involved in a sexual harassment case, which took place in Beausoleil last summer.
Despite that dark cloud over his private life, Ben Yedder was still productive in the season that just ended with twenty goals, sixteen of which were in the league. He was the club’s top scorer for the fifth consecutive season. His most prolific season was his third season (2021/22), in which he managed to score 32 times (including 25 times in the league). Ben Yedder, who was himself a Monaco supporter in his youth, has scored the most goals in Ligue 1 in the past five seasons after Mbappé (129). In a ranking of top scorers in Europe’s top leagues, he finishes in seventh place, behind Lewandowski, Mbappé, Haaland, Kane, Immobile and Salah, among others. In the five years, he became the idol of Monaco’s supporters and was logically also captain.
Director Thiago Scuro made it clear in the past month that a decision would only be made at the end of the season. The two sides spoke twice this week and failed to reach an agreement. It is likely that Ben Yedder did not agree to Monaco’s proposal to reduce his salary by 30%. Ben Yedder has been Monaco’s highest-paid in the last four seasons. He was acquired from Sevilla in 2019 for €40 million. He played for the Spanish club for three seasons, while starting his professional career with Toulouse.
AS Monaco announced on Saturday, during qualifying for the Formula 1 Grand Prix, that Ben Yedder will leave with an announcement on social media: “Merci Wissam, a page in our history books will be turned this summer.”
Monaco now has to find a new top scorer on the transfer market and, according to well-informed circles, seems to be interested in the Georgian Frenchman Georges Mikautadze, who now plays for Metz but is under contract with Ajax.
