Paris Saint-Germain and France star Kylian Mbappe has revealed the real reason why he almost retired from international duty last year.
French Football Federation president Noel Le Graet claimed during a recent interview with Le Journal Du Dimanche that the PSG forward wanted to retire after Les Bleus' disappointing 2020 UEFA European Championship tournament, which was held in 2021.
Scroll through the gallery above to see France's top five goalscorers of all time, per Transfermarkt
According to Le Graet, the 23-year-old felt the federation had not defended him after he missed a crucial penalty against Switzerland in the round of 16, which ultimately led to France's exit from the competition.
However, Mbappe has now hit back at the president for leaving out a key detail about why he felt aggrieved at the time.
"I explained to him well that above all else it was in relation to racism, NOT the penalty," the striker wrote on Twitter in a post quoting Le Graet's comments, per the Daily Mail.
"However, he thought that there hadn't been any racism."
The PSG star's words comes soon after FIFA published a report about the social media abuse players faced during Euro 2020 and the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations.
The study's findings showed that homophobic and racist slurs made up a large percentage of the abuse that was identified on various social media networks.
Read: PSG star: Messi wanted to kill me
This is also not the first time Le Graet has come under fire for his political views, having claimed, in 2020, that racism does not exist in football.
"Racism in France... in a whole match there may be some discrepancies, but we have less than 1% of difficulties today," the 80-year-old told French TV channel BFM at the time.
"When a black guy, forgive me, scores a goal, the whole stadium is standing.
"So, quite frankly, the phenomenon of racism in sport, and in football in particular, does not exist, or [it is] little."
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