A Paris labor court ruled that Paris Saint-Germain must pay more than 60 million euros ($70 million) to Kylian Mbappé in a dispute over unpaid wages and bonuses linked to the end of the France superstar's contract in 2024.
Lawyers argued last month before the Conseil de prud’hommes de Paris in a judicial fight involving colossal sums. On Tuesday, the court sided with Mbappé amid accusations of betrayal and moral harassment that marked the breakdown of his relationship with PSG.
The award roughly corresponds to Mbappé's initial claim of 55 million euros.
“It’s been 18 months indeed that Kylian Mbappé has been asking for the same thing — the payment of his wages, his bonus, for the work he carried out," Mbappé’s lawyer Delphine Verheyden said. "I’m sure he will be happy to close this chapter because it was very important for him to be paid for the work he did while playing for PSG.”
In November, his lawyers claimed that PSG owed him more than 260 million euros, arguing that his fixed-term contract should be reclassified as a permanent one — a move rejected by the judges. Such a reclassification could have triggered compensation for unfair dismissal, unpaid wages, bonuses, and severance.
PSG sought 440 million euros from Mbappé, citing damages and a “loss of opportunity” after he left on a free transfer. The club said it respects the ruling and will comply with it, while reserving all rights to appeal.
“Paris Saint-Germain has acted in good faith and honesty throughout, and we always will,” PSG said. “The club looks forward to the future based on collective unity and success; and we wish the player the best for the future.”
Mbappé's representatives said the ruling “confirms that commitments must be honored. It restores a simple truth: Even in the professional football industry labor law applies to everyone.”
The relationship between the 2018 World Cup winner and the reigning European champion turned bitter when Mbappé decided in 2023 not to extend his contract, which was set to expire in summer 2024.
This deprived the club of a juicy transfer fee despite having offered him the most lucrative contract in club history when he signed a new deal in 2022. He was sidelined from a preseason tour and forced to train with fringe players.
He missed the opening league game but returned to the lineup for a final season after discussions with the club — talks that are central to the dispute.
The club accused Mbappé of backing out of an August 2023 agreement that allegedly included a pay reduction should he leave on a free transfer, an arrangement PSG said was meant to protect its financial stability. PSG claimed Mbappé hid his decision not to extend his contract for nearly 11 months, from July 2022 to June 2023, preventing the club from arranging a transfer and causing major financial harm. It accused him of violating contractual obligations and the principles of good faith and loyalty.
Mbappé’s camp insisted PSG has never produced evidence that the striker agreed to forego any payment. His lawyers claimed the club failed to pay wages and bonuses for April, May, and June 2024.
“Mbappé scrupulously fulfilled his sporting and contractual obligations for seven years and right up to the final day,” his advisers said on Tuesday. “He did everything possible to avoid litigation, even going so far as to withdraw a harassment complaint in a spirit of conciliation. In total, he had been seeking payment of his salaries and bonuses for more than 18 months.”
PSG rejected all accusations of harassment, highlighting that Mbappé took part in over 94% of matches in 2023–24 and always worked under conditions compliant with the Professional Football Charter. The club’s claims included 180 million euros for the lost opportunity to transfer Mbappé, who left as a free agent after turning down a 300 million euros offer from Saudi club Al-Hilal in July 2023.
Mbappé joined PSG from Monaco for 180 million euros. He signed for Real Madrid in the summer of 2024 on a free transfer after scoring a club-record 256 goals in seven years at PSG, which won the Champions League this year without him.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - PSG striker Kylian Mbappe, right, and PSG president Nasser Al-Al-Khelaifi attend a press conference Monday, May 23, 2022 at the Paris des Princes stadium in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler, File)
FILE - PSG President Nasser Al-Khelaifi, left, speaks to PSG's Kylian Mbappe as it is announced he has signed a three year extension to his contract, at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris, France, Saturday, May 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Susie Wiles, President Donald Trump’s understated but influential chief of staff, criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and broadly defended the president’s aggressive second administration in a series of interviews published Tuesday in Vanity Fair.
Wiles told the magazine in a wide-ranging, revealing series of conversations that she underestimated the scandal involving Epstein, the disgraced financier, but sharply criticized how Bondi managed the case and the public’s expectations.
After the story was published, Wiles disparaged it as a “disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” she wrote in a social media post. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”
Wiles did not deny the comments that were attributed to her.
In her rebuttal, Wiles argued that Trump had accomplished more in 11 months than any president had in eight years because of his “unmatched leadership and vision.”
“None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!” she said.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt also rose to Wiles' defense, writing on the X platform that, “President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie. The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”
In the interview, Wiles said Trump wants to keep bombing alleged drug boats in the waters off the coast of Venezuela until that country's leader, Nicolas Maduro, “cries uncle.”
And at one point said she and Trump had a “loose agreement” that his retribution campaign would end before the first 90 days of his second term — but it continues well beyond the three-month mark.
Trump tapped Wiles after she managed his winning 2024 campaign. She is the first woman to ever serve as White House chief of staff and is known for shunning the spotlight. It is rare for her to speak as extensively and openly as she did about the president to the magazine, which published its lengthy interview with her — and other members of the White House staff and the Cabinet. Wiles has been speaking to Vanity Fair since just before Trump took office last January.
Asked about Epstein, Wiles said hadn't really paid attention to “whether all these rich, important men went to that nasty island and did unforgivable things to young girls.”
She said she has read the Epstein file and that Trump is “not in the file doing anything awful.” He and Epstein were friends before they had a falling out.
The Justice Department is facing a Friday deadline to release everything it has on Epstein after Trump, after objecting to the release, signed legislation requiring that the papers be made public.
Wiles criticized Bondi's handling of the case, going back to earlier in the year when she distributed binders to a group of social media influencers that included no new information about Epstein. That led to even more calls from Trump's base for the files to be released.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi. “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
Wiles, over the series of interviews, described the president behind the scenes very much as he presents himself in public: an intense figure who thinks in broad strokes yet is often not concerned with the details of process and policy. She added, though, that he has not been as angry or temperamental as is often suggested, even as she affirmed his ruthlessness and determination to achieve retribution against those he considers his political enemies.
Trump, she said, has “an alcoholic’s personality,” even though the president does not drink. But the personality trait is something she recognizes from her father, the famous sports broadcaster Pat Summerall.
“High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities,” she said, adding that Trump has “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
On Venezuela, Wiles said Trump wants to keep the pressure on Maduro.
“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” Her comment, though, seemed to contradict the administration's position that the strikes are about stopping drugs and saving American lives, not regime change.
She said the administration is “very sure we know who we're blowing up.”
The continued strikes and mounting death toll have drawn scrutiny from Congress, which has pushed back and opened investigations.
Wiles described much of her job as channeling Trump’s energy, whims and desired policy outcomes -- including managing his desire for vengeance against his political opponents, anyone he blames for his 2020 electoral defeat and those who pursued criminal cases against him after his first term.
“We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” Wiles said early in his administration, telling Vanity Fair that she does try to tamp down Trump’s penchant for retribution.
Later in 2025, she pushed back. “I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour,” she said, arguing he was operating on a different principle: ”‘I don’t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else.’ And so people that have done bad things need to get out of the government. In some cases, it may look like retribution. And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”
Asked about the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud, Wiles allowed: “Well, that might be the one retribution.”
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Barrow reported from Atlanta.
FILE - White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles waves after disembarking Air Force One, June 25, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
FILE - White House chief of staff Susie Wiles listens as President Donald Trump meets with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, Feb. 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks with reporters during a news conference at the Department of Justice, Nov. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles listens during a cabinet meeting at the White House, April 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
