Kylian Mbappé's Near Move to Liverpool: A Family Affair
Kylian Mbappé has lifted the lid on just how close he came to wearing Liverpool red as a teenager – and how he turned down his mother’s favourite move to chase a dream in Paris.
The France and Real Madrid forward, now 27, has revealed that Liverpool made a serious push to sign him in 2016, when he was an 18-year-old phenomenon at Monaco. Speaking to The Athletic, Mbappé said the Merseyside club were right in the race for his signature.
“I was close to [joining] Liverpool,” he admitted. “The favourite destination for my mum was Liverpool. She wanted me to go there.”
He didn’t follow that advice.
“I didn’t listen because I wanted to play in my city, Paris. I didn’t want to leave my country before I was someone.”
For Mbappé’s mother, though, Liverpool was the perfect fit. A “big fan” of Jürgen Klopp, she pushed hard for Anfield.
“She was always saying, ‘Liverpool – you’re going to be there, playing at Anfield, it’s going to be insane for you’.”
This was no casual flirtation. Liverpool rolled out a full-scale charm offensive.
Klopp, speaking later as a pundit on Magenta TV during the 2026 World Cup, detailed how far the club went. A flight was arranged from Blackpool to Nice, where “the entire Mbappé family boarded a private jet with five rooms or something”.
“We really went all out. Then we flew around in a circle, talked with the family, ate good food,” Klopp said.
They didn’t want to be seen negotiating in public, so the talks took place in the air. An extraordinary effort. No transfer at the end of it.
“We flew in a circle. It was fantastic. And then he went to Paris,” Klopp added.
Mbappé can laugh about it now. “It’s a funny story,” he said.
Behind that story, his mother was doing her own homework. She travelled to Liverpool for what Mbappé described as the “first step” of negotiations.
“She went to the city, the stadium, she met the people. She was like, ‘it’s a wonderful club, everybody’s so kind, it’s a family club, a big club’,” he recalled.
Anfield did the rest.
“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.”
Liverpool had the project, the manager, the stadium and the approval of the most influential figure in Mbappé’s life. Paris still won.
“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 hometown.”
Mbappé joined Paris St-Germain initially on loan from Monaco, in a deal that included an option to buy for 180m euros (£165.7m). He stayed seven years, became the club’s record goalscorer and the face of French football, before finally making his long-anticipated move to Real Madrid in 2024.
Liverpool were left with a story about a private jet, a manager’s big pitch and a mother who fell for Anfield – and the lingering thought of what might have been if the boy from Bondy had listened.
