Kylian Mbappé's Near Move to Liverpool in 2017

Kylian Mbappé has finally put numbers and names to one of football’s great “what ifs” – just how close he came to joining Liverpool in 2017.

Back then he was still the teenage phenomenon ripping up Ligue 1 with Monaco, the most coveted young forward in Europe and the subject of a scramble among the continent’s superclubs. Real Madrid circled. Paris Saint-Germain circled. So did Liverpool, and harder than many realised.

A family falling for Anfield

Merseyside quickly became more than just another option on a long list. It became the choice his family warmed to most.

The strongest voice pushing him towards the Premier League came from his mother. She flew to Liverpool on her own, walked the city, went to games, and tested the Anfield myth for herself.

“She went to the stadium, she met the people,” Mbappé recalled, speaking to The Athletic. “She was like, ‘It’s a wonderful club, everybody’s so kind, it’s a family club, a big club.’ She went to Anfield and fell in love with it.

“All the time we were talking. ‘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.”

Anfield had done its work. So had Liverpool’s manager. For a moment, the idea of Mbappé in red felt very real.

Klopp, a private jet and a hard sell in the sky

Klopp and Liverpool were not about to let the chance drift by. The club arranged one of the most extravagant pitches of his tenure: a secret meeting aboard a five-room private jet, the kind of setting usually reserved for film scripts or transfer folklore.

Klopp has previously talked about the expense and secrecy of that operation. Mbappé remembers the setting just as vividly – and with a smile.

“I remember we were on the plane and we were turning around and around in the air while he was explaining his project,” he said. “I said, ‘You don’t need to convince me. You’re Jürgen Klopp, it’s Liverpool, a great club, so of course if I’m here, I have some interest. But I have other things, other projects, that are also good’.

“I said to him, ‘Whatever decision I take is going to be a good decision because we are talking about some of the biggest clubs in the world.’ It’s a funny story.”

Liverpool had gone all in: the manager, the jet, the personal touch, the family buy-in. They had a compelling project and, crucially, a teenager who clearly admired the man trying to sign him.

The pressure felt like it might finally tell.

Paris wins the tug-of-war

In the end, emotion pulled harder from home.

“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 home town,” Mbappé said.

Liverpool’s grand pursuit stopped there. Mbappé joined PSG initially on loan before the deal became permanent for €180 million, a fee that underlined both his status and the scale of the opportunity that had slipped away from Anfield.

From that point, the story is well known. He dominated in Paris, stacked up trophies, and turned domestic expectation into routine success.

From near-miss to global icon

On the international stage, Mbappé’s rise accelerated even faster. He won the World Cup with France in 2018 as a teenager, announcing himself on the biggest platform of all.

By the 2026 tournament he had gone beyond simple superstardom. He became the World Cup’s all-time leading scorer, moving past Miroslav Klose and Lionel Messi, even though France’s run ended in the semi-finals against eventual champions Spain.

Those numbers, those stages, those nights – all of it flowed from the decision taken back in 2017, when Liverpool’s jet circled in the sky and Paris waited on the ground.

Now older, fully formed as a global icon and no longer the prodigy Liverpool courted, Mbappé has finally left France. In 2024 he completed his long-anticipated move to Real Madrid, closing the Paris chapter and opening another in the Spanish capital.

Liverpool can only look back and wonder how different the last decade might have looked had that private jet landed with a signature instead of a story.