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French Soccer Star Kylian Mbappé Denies Rape Report

Swedish prosecutors said they were investigating a rape allegation, without naming Mbappé directly, after the soccer star and his entourage visited Stockholm.

Kylian Mbappé during the UEFA Champions League soccer match in France earlier this month. Photo: franck fife/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Kylian Mbappé during the UEFA Champions League soccer match in France earlier this month. Photo: franck fife/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A lawyer for French soccer star Kylian Mbappé, one of the most famous and marketable athletes on the planet, has denied any wrongdoing after Swedish authorities opened a rape investigation following a visit Mbappé and his entourage made to Stockholm last weekend.

The lawyer, Marie-Alix Canu-Bernard, was responding to a report in the Swedish newspaper Expressen saying the soccer star was “suspected on reasonable grounds of rape.” Prosecutors confirmed on Tuesday that they were investigating a rape allegation, but didn’t name Mbappé directly.

“He is completely serene, but he is also astonished to see this media circus,” Canu-Bernard said Tuesday evening. “He doesn’t see anything at all that could be held against him.”

Mbappé himself had earlier posted on X that the matter was “fake news” and hinted that any suggestion of inappropriate behavior could be a dirty trick tied to a continuing contract dispute with his former club Paris Saint-Germain. Representatives for Mbappé, who now plays for Real Madrid, had been due to appear before a magistrate this week over a matter of 55 million euros, equivalent to $59.8 million, in salary and bonuses, which he believes PSG still owes him.

A spokesman for Paris Saint-Germain declined to comment.

Mbappé hasn’t been charged with any crime.

Under normal circumstances, Mbappé wouldn’t have even been in Sweden last weekend, because the French national team was in action in matches against Israel and Belgium. But Mbappé had asked for time off from national-team duty, citing a thigh injury, and went on a trip to Stockholm instead.

“It’s so predictable,” Mbappé posted in a sarcastic tweet after the report emerged, drawing a connection to his dispute with PSG. “And by coincidence [it comes out] the night before the hearing.”

Mbappé has long been the golden boy of French soccer, ever since the kid from the Parisian suburbs emerged as a teenage sensation at AS Monaco. He made his professional debut at just 16 and then moved to PSG in 2017, before his performances for France at the 2018 World Cup launched him to global superstardom. Between his electric speed and his lethal finishing, Mbappé positioned himself as the kind of generational game-changer who could succeed Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. With his business affairs overseen by his mother, he signed major sponsorship deals with Nike and Dior.

That is why when Mbappé first began considering an exit from PSG, it practically became a matter of state. He received phone calls from former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and current President Emmanuel Macron urging him to remain at the club—which is exactly what Mbappé did until last summer when he joined Real Madrid.

But once the long-expected divorce between Mbappé and his hometown club finally came, the terms were less than friendly. Last month, PSG defied a French soccer league order to pay the 55 million euros, arguing that Mbappé had waived it on his way out of Paris.

 

Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com

Appeared in the October 17, 2024, print edition as 'French Soccer Star Mbappé Denies Report of Rape Case'.

Author: Editors Desk, Joshua Robinson

Source: WSJ:

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