France forward Kylian Mbappe has agreed to stay at Paris St-Germain, turning down a move to Real Madrid.
He has signed a lucrative new three-year deal with the French champions.
The 2018 World Cup winner, 23, had been heavily linked with a move to Spain but has committed his future to PSG.
Spain's La Liga reacted angrily to the news, calling the deal "scandalous" and announcing it plans to file a complaint to Uefa as well as French and EU authorities.
"This type of agreement threatens the economic sustainability of European football," read a La Liga statement, adding that it put "hundreds of thousands of jobs and sporting integrity at risk in the medium term, not only from European competitions, but also from our domestic leagues".
According to Spanish football expert Guillem Balague, writing last month, PSG were prepared to offer Mbappe a 150m euro signing-on fee to keep him for another two seasons.
He had agreed a financial package with Real months ago for a potential switch to Spain, but has decided not to join Carlo Ancelotti's side.
Mbappe said he was "very happy" to stay at PSG after he and club president Nasser Al-Khelaifi announced the striker's new deal on Parc des Princes pitch before his side played Metz in their final Ligue 1 match of the season.
Mbappe treble marks new deal as PSG relegate Metz
"I am convinced that here I can continue to grow within a club that gives itself all the means to perform at the highest level," Mbappe said in a club statement.
"I am also very happy to be able to continue playing in France, the country where I was born, grew up and flourished."
Guillem Balague on why Mbappe chose to reject Real Madrid
He initially joined PSG on a season-long loan from Monaco in August 2017 and has helped them win four Ligue 1 titles in five seasons.
With his contract running out in June, the Qatari-owned side were desperate to keep him and were prepared to offer the player a £21m net annual salary.
Mbappe scored in each leg against Real in the Champions League last 16 this season, but it was not enough to prevent PSG from going out 3-2 on aggregate.
He finished the season as Ligue 1's leading scorer with 28 goals and provided a further 17 assists in 35 games as PSG won the domestic title with four games to spare.
'An insult to football'
Javier Tebas, president of Spain's La Liga, has been a staunch opponent of big-spending European clubs such as PSG and Manchester City, as well as the proposed European Super League.
In a post on social media, he said: "What PSG is going to do by renewing Mbappe with large amounts of money after losing 700m euros in recent seasons and having more than 600m euros in wages, is an INSULT to football."
According to a report published earlier this month by a supervisory body of the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP), the governing body of the French professional leagues, PSG made a loss of 224.3m euros during the 2020-21 season.
That came after a loss of 124.2m euros in 2019-20, when the Ligue 1 season was cut short in March 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tebas also added PSG president Al-Khelaifi "is as dangerous as the Super League".
Real Madrid and Barcelona were among 12 leading European clubs that signed up for a breakaway competition last April, but the proposal collapsed within days following a backlash from players and fans, as well as governments and football's governing bodies. PSG and Bayern Munich opposed the controversial plans.
The La Liga statement, released after Tebas' tweet, said it was "scandalous that a club like PSG" could agree such a contract "while those clubs that could accept the arrival of the player without seeing their wage bill compromised are left without being able to sign him".
La Liga said PSG were "not respecting the rules" and repeated many of the accusations made by its president.
Source: BBC
BDST: 1304 HRS, May 22, 2022
SMS
