Ligue 1 giants PSG have been fined €100,000 because of a policy adopted by their scouts which lists the ethnic origins of young recruits. PSG general manager Jean-Claude Blanc who has been at the club since 2011, said that the club’s general management were unaware of this ethnic registration policy.
A few months ago, French investigative website Mediapart reported that PSG had asked its recruiters to divide the origin of players in four categories: ‘Francais’ (French), ‘Maghrebin’ (North African), ‘Antillais’ (West Indian), and ‘Afrique noire’ (Black African).
On November 8, the club said that the ethnic identity files did exist. PSG said, “Paris Saint-Germain confirms that forms with illegal contents were used between 2013 and 2018 by the recruitment cell of the training academy dedicated to regions outside Ile-de-France (Paris area). These forms were an individual initiative of the head of this department.”
It’s a massive shame that one of Europe’s top clubs deploys such a discriminative policy. Now that they have received a fine, let’s hope that the club or any club will refrain from adopting this policy.
