October 27, 2026<\/a><\/p>\nBeverage giant Dongpeng, which during this year\u2019s World Cup ran adverts with AI-generated images of Mbapp\u00e9 consuming its sports drink, said it was terminating all cooperation with the France captain.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur company firmly opposes and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any behaviour that offends national sentiments,\u201d Dongpeng said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Mengniu, China\u2019s largest dairy producer, and cheesemaker Milkground also said that they were cutting ties with Mbapp\u00e9, who until now was hugely popular among Chinese fans with millions of social media followers.<\/p>\n
\u201cDongpeng Beverage ends cooperation with Mbapp\u00e9\u201d was the top-trending topic on Chinese social media site Weibo with 430 million views.<\/p>\n
One Weibo user said the \u201cextremely serious wrong remarks\u2026 crossed the red line\u201d and others urged Dongpeng to remove Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s image from their bottles.<\/p>\n
Dongqiudi, one of China\u2019s biggest online football outlets, said Mbapp\u00e9\u2019s remarks were \u201coffensive to China and the Chinese people\u201d.<\/p>\n
In an interview with French sports newspaper L\u2019Equipe, the 27-year-old Mbapp\u00e9 in September addressed a previous meme depicting him as a military dictator.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a part of it that\u2019s funny\u2026 but there is another part that\u2019s a bit less funny because of the damage such people have caused throughout history,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s foreign ministry said it was aware of the reports regarding Mbapp\u00e9, who on Monday finished runner-up to English forward Harry Kane in the Ballon d\u2019Or award for the world\u2019s best player.<\/p>\n
\u201cWords and actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people will naturally be met with unanimous rejection from all sectors of Chinese society,\u201d spokesman Guo Jiakun told a regular briefing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOOTBALLER KYLIAN MBAPP\u00c9 has apologised after he was dropped by major Chinese brands for apparently joking about Mao…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[114,71871,1128,61,60,65024,27562,256178,2733,3166,112],"class_list":["post-667083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-china","tag-controversial","tag-football","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kylian-mbappe","tag-la-liga","tag-mao-zedong","tag-october","tag-real-madrid","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}