September 7 – Paris Saint-Germain coach Christophe Galtier (pictured) has expressed his regret for what he called “a joke in bad taste” after ridiculing a question about PSG’s private jet travels and the impact on the climate.
After Galtier’s first Champions League win with PSG against Juventus on Tuesday night, he opened his news conference by issuing an apology to mitigate the fallout from ‘char à voile gate’.
Galtier said: “Believe me that I am concerned about the problems of climate, [about the problems of] our planet, I know the responsibility that we have.”
“We are not disconnected. We are very lucid, simply, it is a joke that came at the wrong time, which was in bad taste, and I regret it.”
At a pre-match news conference, Galtier and star striker Kylian Mbappé had laughed off a question from the press pack about why the team travelled in a private jet for a short trip to a game in Nantes at the weekend.
Galtier offered an ironic reply: “This morning we talked about it with the company which organises our trips and we’re looking into travelling on sand yachts.”
The backlash was immediate and Galtier found himself on the end of criticism from politicians and the media. ‘Are you serious, responding like this???,’, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted. ‘Wake up guys???’
French sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra tweeted that she was going to have a chat with Galtier. Galtier’s quip became a top three trending topic on Twitter in France on Tuesday.
On Sunday, a senior SNCF official Alain Krakovitch had tweeted: “Paris-Nantes is less than two hours by TGV [high-speed train] I renew my proposal of a TGV offer adapted to your specifications, for our common interest: security, speed, services and eco-mobility.”
This season PSG has earmarked five matches for travel by bus – Lille, Reims, Auxerre, Troyes and Lens. In the 2019-2020 season, 65% of all team travel in Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 took place by plane, 31% by car and 4% by train.
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