Kylian Mbappe: France star details Liverpool near-miss

• Kylian Mbappe says he came close to a Liverpool transfer while at Monaco, aged 18, before choosing Paris Saint-Germain.
• His mother visited Anfield alone, met club staff and wanted her son to sign, according to Mbappe.
• Jurgen Klopp put the family on a private jet with five rooms and a meal in the air, but the player joined PSG for an eventual €180m deal.

Kylian Mbappe to Liverpool: how the Monaco approach happened

Kylian Mbappe was 18 and lighting up Ligue 1 for Monaco when Liverpool made their move, and he has now confirmed how the transfer came closer to happening than most supporters ever knew.

He set out the detail in an interview with The Athletic, framed around Monaco’s breakthrough campaign that sat across the 2016 and 2017 window rather than one fixed date.

“I was close to [joining] Liverpool. The favourite destination for my mum was Liverpool. She wanted me to go there,” Mbappe told The Athletic, in comments carried in our full report on the French star’s comments.

His mother did more than voice a preference. She travelled to Merseyside on her own, took in the stadium and spoke to people at the club before reporting back.

“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’,” Mbappe said.

He added that “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.”

Mbappe also recalled her repeating the same line to him at home. “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’,” he said.

The expert angle: why Paris outweighed Anfield and Klopp’s pitch

Liverpool did not just rely on a mother’s instinct. Jurgen Klopp went after the whole family, and his own account, given on Magenta TV, shows how far the club went to close the gap.

Klopp said “the entire Mbappe family boarded a private jet with five rooms or something” as Anfield chiefs tried to seal the move.

“We really went all out. Then we flew around in a circle, talked with the family, ate good food,” he explained, before summing up the outcome bluntly: “We flew in a circle. It was fantastic. And then he went to Paris.”

Mbappe called it “a funny story” now, but at 18 the decision came down to something no private jet could change: identity.

He wanted to make his name at home first.

“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,” he said.

He was even more direct about the reasoning behind snubbing his mother’s favourite: “But 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.”

That is the real story behind the failed Kylian Mbappe Liverpool transfer.

Klopp’s charm offensive was not beaten by a rival bid or a better project; it was beaten by a teenager’s plan to conquer his own city before leaving it.

Real Madrid via Paris, not Liverpool

Mbappe’s route from Monaco ran through Paris, not Liverpool. He joined PSG initially on loan, with an option that became a permanent €180m deal, one of the highest fees in the game’s history at the time.

He spent seven years in the French capital, finishing as PSG’s record goalscorer, before completing his move to Real Madrid in 2024.

Coverage of Mbappe’s Real Madrid transition sets out how that switch followed years of transfer talk once his PSG contract wound down.

For Liverpool, the episode stands as confirmation of interest rather than a deal that ever came close to signatures.

Klopp’s jet made the pitch, Mbappe’s hometown ambition made the decision.

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