Kylian Mbappé's Near Move to Liverpool in 2017

Kylian Mbappé has revealed just how close Liverpool came to changing the course of his career – and perhaps their own recent history – with an audacious move for the French prodigy back in 2017.

The Real Madrid forward, speaking to The Athletic, explained that as an 18-year-old at Monaco he held detailed talks with Liverpool and even met then-manager Jürgen Klopp on a private jet over the south of France. The meeting, he says, left a real impression. So did his mother’s enthusiasm.

“I had to take a decision. And yes, I was close to Liverpool,” Mbappé recalled. “My mum was a big fan of Jürgen Klopp and the favourite destination for my mum was Liverpool. She wanted me to go there.”

At that point, Mbappé was the most coveted teenager in world football, tearing through defences with Monaco and attracting interest from Europe’s elite. Liverpool were determined not to just admire from afar. Klopp flew out, sat down with the player and his camp, and tried to sell him the Anfield project face to face.

His mother and agent, Fayza Lamari, was central to it all. She travelled to Liverpool during negotiations and, according to Mbappé, was swept away by what she found.

“She was like, ‘It’s a wonderful club, everybody’s so kind, it’s a family club, a big club,’” he said. Lamari went to Anfield on her own, watched games from the stands and tried to picture her son in red, feeding off the noise of the Kop.

“She went to Anfield and fell in love with it. She watched a few games alone, to feel the atmosphere, because she wanted to imagine me in this stadium,” Mbappé said. “All the time we were talking. [I would say:] ‘What do you think, Mum?’ She’d say, ‘For me, you have to go to Liverpool.’ I said, ‘OK, OK, OK!’ because Jürgen Klopp was an amazing manager. I met him and had a wonderful relationship with him. I had big respect for him.”

The admiration was mutual. Earlier this year, Klopp lifted the lid on that now-famous meeting on the jet from Blackpool to Nice, joking to Magenta TV that it became “the most expensive non-transfer we ever made.”

The groundwork was there. The charm offensive had landed. The family were split between heart and hometown.

That is where Paris stepped in.

Mbappé’s pull towards home proved stronger than his mother’s vision of Anfield. “I didn’t listen because I wanted to play in my city, Paris,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to leave my country before I was someone. But yes, my mum was always saying ‘Liverpool – you’re going to be there, playing at Anfield, it’s going to be insane for you.’ I was like, ‘OK!’”

In the end, the teenager chose Paris Saint-Germain, initially on loan for the 2017-18 season before the move became permanent a year later. He stayed in the French capital until 2024, winning titles and becoming the face of the club before finally sealing his long-anticipated move to Real Madrid.

“In the end I took the decision to go to PSG because for me, born and raised in Paris, there was no better feeling than to show I could be a star in my home town,” he said.

Liverpool moved on, built a Champions League and Premier League-winning side without him, and Mbappé became a global superstar on another stage. Yet the story of the private jet, the Anfield visits, and the mother who wanted to see her son under the lights on Merseyside lingers as one of modern football’s great what-ifs.