PSG Says It Will Fight Order to Pay Mbappé $61 Million in Salary Dispute

The French soccer league’s legal commission ordered Paris Saint-Germain on Thursday to pay its former striker Kylian Mbappé $61 million in the next eight days.

Mbappé, 25, rejected a mediation offer Wednesday from the commission, which he had asked to weigh in on his wage dispute. Thursday’s nonbinding ruling was the only available option for the commission after the player turned down its mediation offer, and Mbappé will need to take his claims to court if he wants to get paid, according to soccer journalist Ben Jacobs. PSG made clear Thursday that it is ready to go to court.

“In light of the limitations of the commission’s legal scope to take a complete decision on this matter, the matter must now be contested in another legal forum, to which Paris Saint-Germain is delighted to present all the facts over the coming months and year,” the club said in a statement.

The 2018 FIFA World Cup winner claims the club owes him three months of his old salary plus a third of a loyalty bonus.  He left his longtime team for Real Madrid earlier this summer. PSG argues it had a verbal agreement with the player—which the club says he repeated publicly—that he violated by leaving Paris on a free transfer. That led Mbappé to go unpaid for the final three months of his contract.

“As a matter of law and fact, the player has made clear, repeated public and private commitments that must be respected, having been afforded unprecedented benefits by the club over seven years in Paris,” PSG said. “And the club looks forward to these being upheld in the proper forum, if the player seeks to pursue this incomprehensibly reputationally damaging matter further, in due course.”

Qatar Sports Investments, a subsidiary of sovereign wealth fund the Qatar Investment Authority, owns Paris Saint-Germain.