France advanced to the quarter-finals of the 2026 World Cup with a 1-0 win over Paraguay at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on 4 July, a match decided by Kylian Mbappé’s 70th-minute penalty after a VAR review ruled that Diego Gómez had tripped Désiré Doué in the box. The contest was marked by persistent physicality and multiple confrontations; Mbappé himself was targeted with heavy challenges throughout. At the final whistle, the France captain refused to shake the hand of Paraguayan goalkeeper Orlando Gill, who then threw the ball at Mbappé’s back. The incident, captured in widely circulated images, became the immediate flashpoint for what followed.

Within hours, Celeste Amarilla, a senator from Paraguay’s Authentic Radical Liberal Party, published a series of posts on X that included explicitly racist language. She described Mbappé as a “colonised Cameroonian, desperately trying to pass himself off as French,” a “brute” who “didn’t even learn to write,” and claimed that “instead of mother’s milk he sucked on coconuts and the most educated things he ever heard were chimpanzees.” She also suggested that Paraguayan players should have slapped him after the match. The posts, which remained online and were widely shared, drew immediate international attention.

Mbappé responded on the same platform with a statement that addressed the senator directly. “Madame Celeste Amarilla, you are a despicable woman and unworthy of your position,” he wrote. “You do not represent Paraguay, that country which has sweated passion and honour throughout the competition. Through your recklessness and your brazen racism, the entire world has already forgotten the journey and the historic effort that your players accomplished during this World Cup.” The French Football Federation (FFF) announced it would file a criminal complaint, calling the remarks “utterly abhorrent and unacceptable” and stating that “the players of the French national team represent France; it is our country that is being insulted.”

In Asunción, the Paraguayan government issued a statement deploring and rejecting the senator’s expressions, which it said were “contrary to the values and principles that inspire peaceful coexistence and respect for human dignity that our country promotes.” The president of Paraguay’s Congress, Basilio Núñez, separately condemned the messages as racist and xenophobic, stressing that they did not represent the genuine values of Paraguayans. In Paris, President Emmanuel Macron expressed his support for Mbappé, and sports minister Marina Ferrari described the comments as “abject, disgraceful and all the more unacceptable coming from a politician.” The episode followed pre-match remarks by former Paraguay goalkeeper José Luis Chilavert, who had referred to the French team as “a squad from Africa,” comments that the FFF president had already labelled a “disgrace.”

France will face Morocco in the quarter-finals on 9 July at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Mbappé’s penalty took his tournament tally to seven goals, leaving him level with Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Norway’s Erling Haaland in the race for the Golden Boot.