Ligue 1's Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) on Thursday confirmed reports of the club profiling young players on racial basis in their recruitment and have already launched internal investigation into the matter.

"Paris Saint Germain reaffirms its firm condemnation of all forms of discrimination, racism or ethnic registration. Paris Saint Germain confirms that (scouting) forms with illegal contents were used between 2013 and 2018 by the recruitment cell of the youth academy, dedicated to territories outside Ile de France. These forms were instituted solely on the personal initiative of the head of this department. As soon as it was informed at the beginning of last October, the Paris Saint-Germain launched an internal investigation to understand how such practices could exist and decide on the necessary measures to take," said PSG in an official statement.

Earlier on Thursday, French media outlet Mediapart revealed that PSG asked their scouts to identify the young soccer talents they found as one of the following ethnic categories: French, North African, West Indian or Black African.

Serge Fournier, former scout of PSG told Mediapart that the term "French" was only used for "white" players. "Yes, there should have been written ‘white'. All the more so because all the players we recommended were French. PSG didn't want us to recruit players born in Africa, because one is never certain about their dates of birth," said Fournier.

Mediapart said that it put together the report based on long-time investigations as well as documents from Football Leaks.

PSG though admitted the existence of such profiling forms, they claimed that such were individual actions of scouts and the club were unaware of them before. The French club also said that their recruitment of young talents only depends on the skills and behaviors of the players, both in the field and within the organization.