Noël Le Graët, president of the French Football Federation (FFF), announced on Wednesday that he wanted to bring together all the players of the France team soon to clarify the exploitation of the image rights of the Blues and “settle quietly” the conflict opened by Kylian Mbappé. During the March rally of the France team, Mbappé had not participated in a sponsorship operation at the Clairefontaine training center to show his disagreement with the agreement signed by the Blues with the FFF for the exploitation of their image rights.
“There will be a global meeting with all the players, and the lawyer (for Mbappé, Delphine Verheyden, editor’s note) I will receive her when she wants”, launched Noël Le Graët at the microphone of France Inter. “I bring (the players) together every time, before every match. If there is a problem, it is exposed, with captain Hugo Lloris. Mbappé, I haven’t seen him much because he has a lawyer we’ve never met. She had to come to the Federation, she canceled two or three times, asked for postponements”, told the leader in the program “La Bande Originale”, hosted by Nagui.
Faced with Mbappé’s decision at the end of March, Le Graët reacted by threatening the player to no longer receive income related to the image rights of the Blues. But the president of the FFF opened the door on Wednesday to a compromise while the Mbappé camp has been asking for four years to discuss the convention again. “We have twelve sponsors, obviously everyone asks for Mbappé, it can be understood that at times he is annoyed. We will settle this quietly,” he said. “Maybe we need to rethink things a bit,” he said, while warning: “I’m not sure that all the players want to change a lot of things.”
Les Bleus, including Mbappé, are summoned to Clairefontaine on Saturday to prepare for the four League of Nations matches scheduled for June, starting with France-Denmark on June 3 at the Stade de France. On Monday, Mbappé was also more engaging by evoking a “little misunderstanding” with the Federation, promising to “settle all this quickly with intelligence and respect”.
