French superstar Kylian Mbappe was reinstated in Paris Saint-Germain’s first team on Sunday after being sidelined for several weeks amid an ongoing contract dispute.

The Frenchman is now considering extending his deal, with PSG growing confident he’ll remain at the club, sources told Julien Laurens of ESPN.

PSG opened their Ligue 1 title defence with a goalless draw at home against Lorient on Saturday as the team’s prize asset watched from the stands.

“After very constructive and positive discussions between Paris Saint-Germain and Kylian Mbappe before the PSG-Lorient match, the player was reinstated in first team training this morning,” PSG said in a statement.

After a summer of flux at the Parc des Princes filled with new arrivals and Lionel Messi’s departure, it is the Mbappe stand-off that continues to dominate the headlines.

The France captain has thus far refused to sign an extension to his PSG deal, meaning he can leave for free next year, with Real Madrid long seen as his preferred destination.

Qatari-owned PSG want to sell him now and bring in a significant transfer fee for a player who cost 180 million euros ($198 million) from Monaco in 2017.

“The position is very clear. If Kylian wants to stay, he must sign a new contract. We can’t let the best player in the world today leave for free. It’s impossible,” PSG president Nasser al-Khelaifi said last month.

Mbappe has not been allowed train with the first team and played only one of PSG’s five warm-up games and was not invited to the pre-season tour in Japan and South Korea.

New coach Luis Enrique on Friday said he hoped a solution could be found, but Mbappe was left out of the squad to face Lorient.

Instead he sat alongside fellow 2018 World Cup winner Ousmane Dembele, who completed his transfer from Barcelona earlier in the day, as Luis Enrique handed debuts to six players.

Despite his sidelining Mbappe was one of the first to welcome Dembele.

“Welcome home my brother, so happy to see you here, the adventure begins,” Mbappe posted on social media.

The two friends then appeared smiling together in the stands while Brazilian star Neymar, whose future is also in doubt, was absent because of a “viral syndrome”.

With his reinstatement, Mbappe has partly won his case, even if it is too early to know if it will lead to the contract extension the club are demanding.

Saturday’s offensive weaknesses against Lorient may have prompted PSG to soften their attitude towards the top scorer in the club’s history.

The 24-year-old forward is now available for the trip to Toulouse on August 19, even if he has played just once, a friendly against Le Havre, in the past two months.

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — The butterflies aren’t something that Damar Hamlin anticipates going away. And they aren’t new either.

When Hamlin was younger, he would get very nervous before games, so much so that he wouldn’t be able to do anything else. His dad, Mario, told him that it was a good thing to be nervous. “‘You know that mean you care. That mean you ready,'” Damar Hamlin recalled his father saying.

The Buffalo Bills’ preseason opener against the Indianapolis Colts, a 23-19 victory Saturday, marked the 25-year-old’s first football game since suffering cardiac arrest during a regular-season matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals on Jan. 2.

Hamlin said that the first hit — which came on the second of back-to-back blitzes in which he made the final tackle on running back Evan Hull on a fourth-and-1 play in the middle of the first quarter to get the ball back to the Bills’ offense — took a little weight off his shoulders.

But the butterflies before that first hit takes place in a game, which he described as universal for athletes, is something he expects to remain.

“When I’m feeling those nerves and I’m feeling those emotions, it just means I, it means I love, I really love this,” Hamlin said, whose first play back was a kickoff. “I love this, like, I want to be here. I want to play, I want to do good. I want to be one of the greats. I want to be remembered as somebody who, you know, stood for something and who made a difference when I was out there on the field.”

Hamlin said he was able to manage his emotions going into the game through his preparation, doing extra work during the week, including extra tackling, but on the field, he played without hesitation, saying, “You put yourself at risk by hesitating.” He said he was feeling the emotions of his return all at once during the day, but that he has people around him who have helped his mindset.

Hamlin, who has been a full participant at practice since early June during OTAs, played both special teams and safety in his first game back with 20 defensive snaps on the second-team defense and four special teams snaps (about one quarter of play in total). He didn’t exactly have a quiet return to game action. The third-year safety recorded three tackles in the game, each met with a loud cheer from the crowd when his name was announced in the stadium.

His return, which Hamlin described as “another milestone” and a “step in the right direction,” was hailed by head coach Sean McDermott as “remarkable.”

“It’s a true sign of a young man’s courage and obviously everyone who helped him get to this point,” McDermott said. “I know there was a football game going on out there today, but I mean truly remarkable display of courage and strength and faith. I had a chance to communicate with Damar a little bit last night, and he assured me he was ready to go. So, he trusts his preparation and God. I think that shows a lot about who he is.”

McDermott said that the meeting with Hamlin on Friday night was to check in with him and to emphasize the support that he has and that there was no pressure from McDermott to play in the game. Throughout Hamlin’s return, the team has emphasized to Hamlin and publicly that it is going to go at his pace from both a mental and physical perspective.

Extra caution still remains, however, from those who care for him with McDermott, who had his first game as the Bills’ defensive playcaller, taking advantage of a brief thunderstorm delay to the pregame warmups to talk to the team doctors and to make sure there would be eyes on Hamlin.

“I was just kind of sitting near [the doctors], I said, ‘Hey, you’re going to watch him, right? Extra close today.’ They assured that they would,” McDermott said. “It’s hard for me to do that. I certainly watch him when I can, but I know he’s in good hands with those docs, as well.”

Hamlin was ready to go and easy to spot with his red arm band and gloves on a day that he described as “super fun,” but he acknowledged the plethora of emotions that he felt and continues to feel. He made a guest appearance early in the game, running from the sideline to celebrate with his longtime friend from the Pittsburgh area and former Pitt teammate, cornerback Dane Jackson, when Jackson caught an interception on the first defensive series of the game.

“It was great to see him back out there,” Jackson said.

While there were requests for Hamlin’s jersey after the game, including from former Bills wide receiver Isaiah McKenzie, this one had to go to his mom, Nina, who was in the stands. Hamlin described her as “my backbone my entire life,” while his dad, Mario, and 8-year-old brother, Damir, were back home at Damir’s football game with Mario coaching. Damar Hamlin checked in during his own game to see how his brother’s Sto-Rox Little Vikings football team, was doing — it won 7-0.

Next for Hamlin is a preseason game in his hometown against the Steelers next Saturday, but before he gets to that, the next milestone is pretty simple: “Practice tomorrow.”

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Arizona Cardinals running back Marlon Mack, who signed with the team on Friday, will miss the rest of the season with an Achilles injury, coach Jonathan Gannon said Wednesday.

Mack, 27, suffered the injury to his left Achilles midway through Tuesday’s practice and did not return. He tore his right Achilles early in the 2020 season, when he was with the Indianapolis Colts.

Gannon was Indianapolis’ defensive backs coach that year as well.

“Terrible,” said Gannon, when asked how he felt about Mack’s injury.

Gannon declined to go into the conversations he’s had with Mack since the injury.

After his first practice with the team on Saturday, Mack said he hoped to show the Cardinals enough to make the 53-man roster and that he felt like a “deer” on the field with fresh legs.

After his first five seasons with the Colts, Mack spent last season with the San Francisco 49ers and the Denver Broncos, totaling 185 rushing yards and a touchdown in eight games.

Overall, he’s rushed for 2,568 yards and 21 TDs in six seasons. He’s also caught 65 career passes for 547 yards and three more scores.