PSG take down season ticket renewal video following Kylian Mbappé criticism

Having launched their season ticket renewal campaign today, Paris Saint-Germain not have imagined a worse reception to the Kylian Mbappé-fronted promotional video released this afternoon. Not least from the man himself, who has sought to distance himself from the clip, which he feels depicts him as being front and centre of the project – “It’s definitely not Kylian Saint-Germain”, as the France captain put it.

The video featured several of the team’s home-grown players –  Warren Zaïre-Emery and Ismaël Gharbi, for instance – but not the team’s two other star forwards in Lionel Messi and Neymar. Amid reports that the Argentine and the Brazilian are no longer part of the club’s plans, their absence from the video has inevitably been seen as a deliberate decision.

RMC Sport report this afternoon that behind the scenes, club president Nasser Al Khelaifi unhappy about the video – as he looks to avoid further tension at the club, which has ostensibly entered crisis mode amid a poor run of results – and has called up Mbappé. 

At the time of writing, Paris Saint-Germain have yet to make a statement on the video or its removal. In his response to the video, posted on Instagram, Mbappé explained that he was unaware that the interview seen in the clip would be used for a season ticket campaign, and that he believes the incident justifies his concern over his image rights – an issue he first brought to the fore while on international duty.

GFFN | Raphaël Jucobin