Mbappé – Mao Zedong controversy: Chinese public television carries out its threat and skips the Real match

So it was not a threat in the wind. Chinese public television CCTV deprived its viewers of a Real Madrid championship match on Sunday, after announcing this week that it would suspend broadcasting of La Liga following Kylian Mbappé's comments about former Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

The meeting scheduled for this Sunday afternoon between Racing Santander and the Madrid team, where the French footballer plays, was not broadcast on either of CCTV's two sports channels. The Frenchman's apologies, after a heartbreaking controversy in which Mbappé had basically nothing to reproach himself for, were therefore not enough to calm the wrath of the Chinese authorities.

The boycott at work in China

In China, three companies stopped their collaboration with the top scorer in the history of the World Cup after he “dared” to evoke a “meme” of him disguised as Mao Zedong, designating the former Grand Helmsman as “a dictator”, which he actually was, while a movement to boycott the player was felt in recent days in the Middle Kingdom.

It remains to be seen whether the attempts of Mbappé, La Liga and Real Madrid to put out the fire will be enough to calm things down with the Beijing regime, otherwise the loss of earnings for Real and the Spanish league promises to be very high in the event of non-broadcast of matches in this country where football continues to grow.