French football club Paris Saint Germain has set its lawyers on M.I.A.
Universal Music has been told to take down the video for ‘Borders’, the singer’s stark visualisation of the European refugee crisis, in which she wears a customised version of the PSG strip emblazoned with ‘Fly Pirates’.
“We had the unpleasant surprise to find that the singer in this video clip appears twice wearing the official jersey of our team,” write the baffled lawyers, “bearing the very easily recognizable logo PARIS SAINT GERMAIN and our sponsors’ brands (NIKE and QNB), and the brand of our sponsor EMIRATES which slogan was diverted from “FLY EMIRATES” to “FLY PIRATES”.
They added: “More than being surprised, we simply do not understand why we are associated, through our logo and the official jersey of our team’s players, to such denunciation.”
The letter goes on to detail Paris Saint Germain’s “prestigious” track record (“it notably won the French national championship nine times”) and charitable activities at length, arguing that any attempt to connect PSG’s brand with the treatment of refugees is “a source of discredit for a club and distorts its public communication policy.”
Watch the offending video below. It’s the latest bizarre legal wrangle for M.I.A., who in 2014 was sued by the NFL for a preposterous $16 million over her one-finger salute at the Super Bowl.