Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the president of Paris Saint-Germain, has responded to La Liga president Javier Tebas’s criticism of Kylian Mbappe’s new deal.
As he approached the end of his last contract with the French champions, the striker was generally anticipated to join Real Madrid on a free transfer.
Mbappe, however, rocked the football world by signing a new three-year contract with Les Parisiens, binding him to the club until the conclusion of the 2024-25 season.
Mbappe’s rich new contract, at an estimated €40 million (£34 million) per year, has been dubbed “scandalous” by La Liga, while president Tebas has called it an “insult to football.”
Full LaLiga statement
“LaLiga wishes to state that this type of agreement attacks the economic stability of European football, putting at risk hundreds of thousands of jobs and the integrity of the sport, not only in European competitions, but also in domestic leagues,” the statement read.
“LaLiga will file a complaint against PSG before UEFA, the French administrative and fiscal authorities, and European Union authorities to continue to defend the economic ecosystem of European football and its sustainability.
“This behaviour demonstrates once more that state-owned clubs do not respect and do not want to respect the rules of a sector as important as football. These rules are key to protect and sustain hundreds of thousands of jobs.
“This kind of behaviour led by Al-Khelaifi, president of PSG, and member of the UEFA Executive Committee and president of ECA, endangers European football on the same level as the European Super League.”
Nasser responds
“I think he (Tebas) is maybe scared of Ligue 1 becoming bigger than La Liga. That’s a good thing for us. It is a positive for us as a club,” Al-Khelaifi told reporters.
“La Liga isn’t what it was three or four years ago. We have a lot of respect for all of the clubs in La Liga as well as for the championship, but we need to be respected as well. We have Mbappe, he stays with us and the rest, honestly, I don’t care.”
Mbappe marked the start of his new deal with a hat-trick in Saturday’s 5-0 hammering of Metz, which saw him finish the Ligue 1 season with 28 goals and 17 assists.
Since joining Mauricio Pochettino’s team on loan in the summer of 2017, the former Monaco youngster has scored 171 goals and provided 87 assists in 217 appearances.
