Paris Saint-Germain have fervently denied leading a smear campaign against wantaway forward Kylian Mbappe.
90min reports that Mbappe has asked to leave PSG as early as January following a breakdown in his relationship with those in charge at Parc des Princes, despite only inking a new contract with the Ligue 1 champions this past summer.
The next twist in this saga came as Mediapart published a report accusing PSG of employing a company, Digital Big Brother, to create hundreds of fake Twitter accounts to criticise and abuse Mbappe, among others, to try and paint the club in a positive light – something Mbappe’s mother appeared to agree with by sharing a post on Twitter.
“PSG strongly deny Mediapart’s allegations,” a club statement read. “PSG is an international brand that works constantly with social media agencies around the world to promote and celebrate the achievements of the Club, its employees and its partners, like all companies.
“The Club has never contracted with an agency to harm anyone.”
Now, however, PSG’s defence has been disputed by Frederic Geldhof, a former director of UReputation – a subsidiary of Digital Big Brother – who claimed he has worked directly with PSG to create an army of Twitter trolls.
“Our role was to make noise on social networks and the internet following a strategy from [PSG]’s communication department,” Geldhof told RTL. “The enemies were the rumours which could harm them. This is what was requested by the client.
“For PSG to say ‘no, no, we don’t know them’, it’s astonishing.”
Geldhof declined to confirm whether Mbappe was the target of his campaign.
