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Former Paris St Germain player Kylian Mbappe
France soccer captain Kylian Mbappe’s legal team have appealed to the French sports minister and UEFA for his former club Paris St Germain to pay him 55 million euros ($61.25 million) in unpaid wages and said several of the club’s accounts had been frozen on Thursday (April 10).
“We’re going to go on the attack,” Delphine Verheyden, Mbappe’s lawyer, told a press conference.
The French League (LFP) ordered PSG to pay the player last year but the French Football Federation ruled that Mbappe’s request was inadmissible because of an ongoing procedure in a civil court.
Mbappe’s legal team, however, have turned to a Paris court to freeze 55 million euros in PSG’s accounts.
“We have protectively seized the accounts of PSG, to the tune of 55 million euros, this morning,” Thomas Clay, one of Mbappe’s legal experts, said.
PSG said in October that they would be “forced to bring the case before the competent courts” while they were still trying to find an “amicable solution” with Mbappe.
“After hearing yet another fantastic story from a parallel universe today, PSG continues to fail to understand why Kylian Mbappe is not taking his case to the labour chamber, which is the only court competent to settle the dispute between him and his former club,” PSG said on Thursday.
“His lawyers claim it’s because he’s not an employee like the others.”
PSG believes, on the contrary, that he is an employee like any other, and that he must respect the clear and repeated public and private commitments he has made to his employer.
“All the procedures announced by Kylian Mbappe’s lawyers only serve to delay the resolution of the dispute by the labour chamber, before which PSG is ready to present all the facts, evidence and testimony proving the existence of an agreement, or better still by means of the transaction that PSG has been calling for over a year.”
Mbappe’s lawyers on Thursday said they would submit their case before the labour chamber.
“The club reaffirms its desire to reach an amicable outcome, as it has always been in favour of doing, despite the repeated signs of bad faith and the player’s total refusal of any mediation,” PSG added.
In January last year, Mbappe said he had made an agreement with PSG chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi which would “protect all parties and preserve the club’s serenity for the challenges ahead.”
Mbappe became PSG’s all-time top scorer during his seven-year stay in the capital but the 26-year-old joined Real Madrid as a free agent last year.
PSG had also said that Mbappe had refused an offer from the LFP to mediate on the issue.
Another lawyer, Pierre-Olivier Sur, said they had filed a complaint for harassment, claiming PSG put pressure on Mbappe to extend his contract in 2023, one year before it ended.
The Ligue 1 champions, however, argue that Mbappe’s contract was “legally amended” and that the forward had reneged on commitments when he left the Paris club to join Real Madrid.
