Many were outraged at the behaviour of the footballer, especially since the recipient of his gift - a Muslim mixed martial arts champion - had previously posted an offensive image of the president on social media. The footballer was also scrutinised that day for mortally threatening a player of the opposing team during the match, which was caught on video.

The gestures of two players of the French Paris-Saint-Germain football team have stirred up quite an outrage. After the Barcelona-PSG match on 17 February, Keylor Navas of the Costa Rica National team and the French player Kylian Mbappe – whose father is from Cameroon and her mother is from Algeria – gifted their jerseys to Russian MMA World Champion fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov, who was sitting in the crowd. 

The two players gave their signed jerseys to the martial artist in the locker room following the match.

It was especially Mbappe s gesture which provoked outrage and even caught the attention of politicians. Right-wing National Rally party member Jordan Bardella addressed the footballer directly on Twitter, enquiring if it was really worthy of a French team s player to offer his jersey to a man who had previously insulted the French people.

By that, Bardella meant that Nurmagomedov had shared a picture of French President Emmanuel Macron with a boot print across his face in response to the tragic assassination of teacher Samuel Paty, back in October. Alongside the picture, he wrote, „May the Almighty disfigure the face of this creature and all its followers, who, under the slogan of freedom of speech, offend the feelings of more than one and a half billion Muslim believers”.

The outburst from Nurmagomedov, a practising Muslim, came after the French president described Samuel Paty s beheading as an Islamist terrorist act, and underlined that freedom of speech was a fundamental value in France.

French activist Damien Rieu, one of the founders of Generation Identitaire – the group the interior minister intends to dissolve – also took to Twitter to share the outrageous statement made by the martial artist, sarcastically adding that Mbappa gifted his jersey to a truly likeable guy.

It wasn t Mbappe s only act in the match to provoke strong feelings. In the pitch, he got involved in a spat with Barcelona player Jordi Alba and threatened him with death. In the video capturing the scene, the French striker is heard telling the Barca man that „I ll kill you in the street.”

The referee did not intervene, and the match resumed after the argument. This is all the more interesting as in December, the PSG vs Basaksehir Champions League match was suspended due to an alleged racist abuse after Romanian fourth official Sebastian Coltescu had called Pierre Webo, the Turkish team s assistant manager,  black . A huge scandal ensued from the in incident, but this time the death threat appears to have slipped the attention of the referee.