Monaco did not expect to sell Kylian Mbappe last summer. They did not expect any club to come close to their valuation – an astronomical €180 million (£162m) – for the 18 year-old, but then Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid both did just that in what turned out to be an astonishing transfer window. And for the French champions, in particular.

Benjamin Mendy and Bernardo Silva to Manchester City, Tiemoue Bakayoko to Chelsea and Mbappe to PSG. It was a new ‘world record’ for transfer fees for one club. “€360m (£321m), or thereabouts,” says Vadim Vasilyev, Monaco’s vice-president, when asked how much had been brought in. “And it could have been more,” he adds.

Offers for Thomas Lemar from Liverpool and then Arsenal, who bid €100m (£90m), were rejected and Monaco also refused to sell Fabinho. They could – if they had wanted – have banked €500m (£446m) in one transfer window alone, as Vasilyev acknowledges. “Absolutely, it could have been close to half a billion,” he says, without batting an eyelid.

It is just over four months since we last met, in Paris, for an interview just hours after Monaco had won the French league title – for the first time in 17 years – in a season in which they went through the qualifying rounds to the semi-finals of the Champions League with an exciting, young, attacking team. Then Vasilyev had predicted there would be “quite a few” bids for Monaco’s players and it would be a battle to stop the team from breaking up.