France football skipper Kylian Mbappé and his former club Paris Saint-Germain on Monday launched a series of claims and counterclaims worth hundreds of millions of euros in their dispute over Mbappé's departure from the club in July 2024.
PSG told a labour tribunal in Paris that they want €180 million from their former striker in compensation for his refusal to go to the Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal.
The outfit had offered to pay €300 million for Mbappé's services in July 2023.
Mbappé, 26, claims PSG owe him €240 million for the reclassification of his short-term contracts into a permanent contract and over the poor way the club treated him when he said he wanted to leave as a free agent at the end of his deal.
The Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) – which runs the top two divisions in France – ordered PSG in September 2024 to pay Mbappé €55 million in salary and bonuses he said he should have received when he quit the French capital for Real Madrid.
PSG said they did not owe him that sum. They say that Mbappé verbally agreed to renounce the payments owed to him at the end of his contract when he was drafted back into the first team at the start of the 2023-24 season. Mbappé has rejected the claim.
New kit brightens up PSG's Champions League woes and Mbappé's farewell
The forward had been excluded from the squad after announcing he did not want to sign an extension and intended to see out his contract in the summer of 2024.
Mbappé was eventually reinstated after the start of the season 2023/2024 season and his goals helped new boss Luis Enrique to win a treble of Ligue 1 title, French Super Cup, and Coupe de France.
Mbappé joined PSG in July 2017 and seemed poised to join Madrid during the summer of 2022 as a free agent.
But the French President Emmanuel Macron encouraged him to stay at PSG and Mbappé stunned the Madrid hierarchy by signing a two-year deal in May 2022 with the option of a third year.
"I'm going to remain in my hometown and do what I like doing ... playing football and winning more trophies," said Mbappé as his contract extension was announced to a delirious horde of PSG fans before the game against Metz at the Parc des Princes.
Failure
But even with Neymar and Lionel Messi, PSG failed to make any inroads in the 2023/2024 Champions League and the call of Madrid resurfaced.
In August 2023, Mbappé said he would not take up the contract's option of a further year and leave as a free agent in June 2024.
Outraged, the PSG hierarchy told Enrique to go on a pre-season tour of Japan and South Korea without their star striker.
During his seven years in the capital, Mbappé harvested 15 medals including six Ligue 1 titles. He became PSG's record scorer with 256 goals in 308 games and the marksmanship helped him to a plethora of awards: he was named Ligue 1 Player of the Season a record five consecutive times and he claimed the Ligue 1 "Golden Boot" from 2019 to 2024.
PSG swept the board following Mbappé's move.
Enrique retained all three domestic trophies and they humiliated Inter Milan 5-0 to brandish the Champions League trophy for the first time.
PSG and Enrique took the team of the year and coach of the year awards respectively at the Ballon d'Or ceremony in Paris in September.
PSG striker Ousmane Dembélé won the individual prize for his performances in their surge to the silverware.
