French football star Kylian Mbappé and his manager at Paris Saint Germain, Christophe Galtier, have sparked a heated debate in France over their response to a question about using private jets to travel to games.
Galtier, asked about the club’s choice of taking the plane rather than the train to go to Nantes over the weekend, chose irony over sensibility.
Nantes is only two hours from the French capital on a high-speed TGV train.
«This morning, we discussed with the company with which we sort our travel to know if we could not travel by sand yacht,» Galtier responded at a press conference on Monday.
The journalist who asked the question was following up on a tweet from an executive of the state-owned SNCF railway company.
Alain Krakovitch, retweeting a video of PSG players flying to Nantes, said he was renewing SNCF’s offer to help the club travel by train.
France’s sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra fired back in a tweet, saying she was used to more responsible answers from Galtier.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo joined the criticism of Galtier, urging the club’s officials to “wake up” while politicians from across the spectrum called for a more serious approach to the issue.
PSG’s Lionel Messi was also criticised for his private air travel usage, making 52 flights from June to August, according to the French activist organisation Attac.