“My client simply wants his work to be paid at this stage, as should be the case for any other player in his situation, and for any employee who has completed his fixed-term contract. We have an employee on a fixed-term contract who is going to the end of his contract, to whom the employer says: ‘you are going elsewhere, I am not paying you for the work you have done’. Employment law must apply.” These are the words of Delphine Verheyden, Kylian Mbappé’s lawyer, and pronounced in the columns of World this Wednesday, a few hours after the meeting of his team and representatives of PSG before the legal commission of the LFP, within the framework of the financial dispute opposing Mbappé to his former employer.
As a reminder, the French international had claimed this summer 55 million euros in unpaid bonuses and salaries, corresponding more precisely to the amount of his bonus of “loyalty” and his last three months of salary in Paris, before his departure for Real Madrid. Initially, this financial dispute resulted in a formal notice, before the player and his clan seized the legal committee of the LFP. This Wednesday marked the meeting between the two parties at the League. But after nearly two and a half hours of discussions, the legal committee did not take a position, inviting the player and the capital club to engage in mediation to find a bilateral agreement.
The procedure could last for years
In the afternoon, we learned via a press release sent to theAFP that Kylian Mbappé and his clan had rejected this mediation proposal. Now, a decision is expected from the LFP, and this should be notified to the different parties this Friday, according to The TeamBut according to the sports daily, the chances of seeing Paris being ordered to pay the 55 million euros to its former employee remain slim, with the trend leaning more towards a resolution of the dispute before a court.
And so it is to the industrial tribunal, authorized to settle labor law disputes, that the two clans should be referred. Which could further prolong the wait for a resolution… The Team specifies that the procedures could indeed stretch over several years. Suffice to say that we are now faced with a textbook case: word against word, because no document had been signed. On the one hand, Paris continues to support the idea that an oral (and therefore moral) agreement had been reached with Kylian Mbappé on the subject of his renunciation of certain bonuses, when Mbappé protests and assures on his side that the commitments had not been kept, which would thus render this agreement obsolete. In other words: we are today closer to the beginning than the end of this saga.
