LPSG has appealed the decision of the Professional Football League (LFP) which ordered it to pay 55 million euros in unpaid debts to Kylian Mbappé, who left this summer for Real Madrid, the Parisian club announced on Friday.
Seized by the Blues striker, the LFP legal committee initially recommended mediation but, faced with the player’s refusal, it asked PSG last week to pay the 55 million euros within a week, i.e. this Friday evening at the latest. “In principle, PSG has appealed the opinion of the LFP Commission, despite its limited effect,” the club declared, confirming information from the newspaper Le Monde.
The conflict between the two parties stems from the status of an agreement reached in August 2023 between Mbappé and PSG management. The striker was then sidelined from the team for refusing to extend his contract with PSG (this extension would have guaranteed the club to receive the money from a transfer while Mbappé signed on a free with Real Madrid at the end of last season).
A “hidden agreement”
In this agreement, the player therefore agreed to give up 55 million in various bonuses if he were to leave on a free at the end of the season – which he did. This sum includes the last third of a signing bonus (36 million euros gross) that the player was supposed to receive in February, the last three months of salary provided for in his contract (April, May, June), as well as an ethics bonus over these three months.
But the validity of this agreement, which the player himself had publicly mentioned to journalists last January, is contested by the Mbappé camp. In his entourage, there is talk of a “hidden agreement”.
Several possible remedies
This “mediation process having been totally refused by the player, the commission had no choice but to render an opinion according to which – very simply – a contractual relationship exists between the parties. This point is neither discussed nor contested – what is discussed, and which will ultimately be heard by an appropriate court, is that the original contract has been legally modified, and also fully respected, by the player and PSG – until the player decides to renege on all his commitments by leaving the club”, assures PSG in its long press release.
Several appeals are possible: with the French Football Federation (FFF), on which the higher appeals committee depends, then before an administrative court with conciliation before the French National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSF), indicated the source close to the case, or before the industrial tribunal.
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