How Kylian Mbappé Came Close to Joining Liverpool FC | OneFootball

Nowadays, we have all grown somewhat used to the best players on the planet wanting to play for Liverpool. Sure, we never managed to get Lionel Messi through the door, but the likes of Virgil van Dijk, Florian Wirtz and Bradley Barcola have all turned down more lucrative contracts with Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain respectively in order to line up in Red.

Now it has emerged that we came remarkably close to signing Kylian Mbappé, all because the player’s mum liked Jürgen Klopp and wanted her son to make Anfield his home.

Mum Knows Best

Kylian Mbappé with the World Cup in 2018 – Эдгар Брещанов, CC BY-SA 3.0 GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons

It was back in 2017 that Kylian Mbappé was preparing to leave Monaco, meaning that suitors from all over were keen to secure his signature. The Reds pulled out all of the stops to try to persuade the attacker to sign for Liverpool, taking a private jet from Blackpool to Nice in order to get him and his entourage on board, flying around and around so that they couldn’t be seen together, as Jürgen Klopp spoke to the French teenager about his plans for the future and where Mbappé would fit into them.

For his part, the player 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.” One of those ‘other projects’ turned out to be Paris Saint-Germain, whom Mbappé chose to sign for instead because he was only 18 years old and didn’t want to leave France. Having been born and raised in Paris, he wanted to prove to the world that he could be a star in his hometown.

It was at a time that Liverpool already boasted an attack of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané, so adding Mbappé to it would have made us virtually unbeatable. In fact, we went on to become champions of England, Europe and the world without the French forward, who would have been a case of gilding the lily rather than an out-and-out requirement. His mum had been to Anfield and spent time in the city, telling her son that it was the place he should go before he decided that home comforts mattered more than pleasing his own mother.