PSG to probe racial profiling

France coach Didier Deschamps has attacked Paris Saint-Germain’s (PSG’s) alleged racial profiling of players as “unacceptable and intolerable”.

French investigative website Mediapart claimed last week that the Ligue 1 club’s talent scouts has operated a system of racial profiling for years.

The revelations prompted the French champions to launch an immediate investigation.

GM Jean-Claude Blanc acknowledged that the practice, illegal in France, had taken place at PSG but blamed the scandal on a “handful of individuals” acting on their own.

Deschamps gave a forthright response when asked about the affair at a training camp for France’s Nations League game against the Netherlands.

“They are simply unacceptable and intolerable actions,” the France boss said.

Mediapart, citing the latest series of Football Leaks documents, said that between 2013 and 2018, PSG’s scouting department filled in recruitment forms on potential youth signings that included a section on ethnicity. The section offered four options: French, North African, African, West Indian.

Documenting information on racial or ethnic origins is outlawed in France.

The club said an internal probe was launched in October “to understand how such practices could exist and decide what measures to take”.

The 2018 World Cup winners travel to Rotterdam to face Ronald Koeman’s Netherlands on Friday before a friendly against Uruguay the next Tuesday in Paris.