Mbappé's Close Call with Liverpool: A Missed Opportunity

Kylian Mbappé has lifted the lid on one of modern football’s great “what ifs” – and it involves a private jet, Jurgen Klopp and a mother who had already fallen for Anfield.

Speaking to The Athletic, the France captain revealed he came close to joining Liverpool in the summer of 2017, when he was still the teenage sensation at Monaco and not yet the global superstar he would become at Paris Saint-Germain and now Real Madrid.

He was 18. The decision, he says, was real.

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

Klopp did more than just register interest. Liverpool flew to him.

The German coach met Mbappé on a private jet over the south of France, with the player’s mother and agent, Fayza Lamari, also on board. Klopp tried to sell the project, the club, the future – and he clearly left an impression.

“I didn’t listen because I wanted to play in my city, Paris,” Mbappé said. “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!’”

Lamari did her homework. Long before any contract was signed elsewhere, she went to see Liverpool for herself.

She travelled to Anfield, walked into the stadium, and soaked it all in. She watched games alone, not as a tourist but as a mother trying to picture her son on that pitch, in that red shirt, under those lights.

“She was like, ‘It’s a wonderful club, everybody’s so kind, it’s a family club, a big club,’” Mbappé said. “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.

“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 Jurgen Klopp was an amazing manager. I met him and had a wonderful relationship with him. I had big respect for him.”

Klopp himself has already spoken about that meeting, telling German outlet Magenta TV earlier this year that the private jet trip – from Blackpool to Nice – was “the most expensive non-transfer we ever made”.

Liverpool had the charm offensive. They had the manager, the project, the mother’s blessing. What they didn’t have was Paris.

Ultimately, Mbappé chose PSG. First on loan for the 2017-18 season, then permanently the following year. He stayed there until 2024, when he finally made the 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. Klopp built a Champions League and Premier League-winning side without him. Mbappé became the face of PSG and a World Cup winner with France.

But somewhere in that summer of 2017, on a jet above the Mediterranean and in the stands at Anfield, a very different version of football history briefly came into focus – and then slipped away.