Kylian Mbappé's Near Transfer to Liverpool: The Secret Pitch
Kylian Mbappé has revealed just how close Liverpool came to pulling off the transfer that might have changed modern football.
Back in 2017, he was still the teenage phenomenon tearing up Ligue 1 with Monaco, the most wanted young forward in Europe. Every superclub wanted him. Liverpool were not just in the queue – for a while, they were right at the front.
Klopp, a private jet and a secret pitch in the sky
Jurgen Klopp did not settle for a routine meeting at Melwood or a quiet chat in a hotel lobby. He went big. Liverpool arranged a highly secretive summit on a luxurious five-room private jet, with Klopp using the unusual setting to sell his sporting project to Mbappé and his camp.
Mbappé remembers the scene clearly. The plane circling in the air. Klopp outlining his vision. Liverpool throwing everything at it.
"I remember we were on the plane and we were turning around and around in the air while he was explaining his project," Mbappé told The Athletic. He told Klopp he did not need convincing: this was Liverpool, this was Klopp, this was serious. But there were other giants at the table too. Other projects. Other dreams.
Liverpool’s hierarchy did all they could. The charm offensive, the secrecy, the expense – it was all there. The deal still slipped away.
Mbappé chose Paris Saint-Germain. Liverpool were left with the question that has lingered ever since: what if?
A mother in love with Anfield
The strongest push towards Anfield did not come from the club or even from Klopp. It came from Mbappé’s mother.
She travelled to Merseyside alone for the first crucial steps of the negotiations. No entourage. No fanfare. Just a mother trying to feel a city and a club for herself.
She walked around Liverpool. She went to matches. She soaked up Anfield on her own terms.
"She went to the stadium, she met the people," Mbappé recalled. "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."
Their conversations became a tug of emotion and ambition.
"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!'" Mbappé admitted, laughing at the memory. Klopp helped. "Jurgen Klopp was an amazing manager. I met him and had a wonderful relationship with him. I had big respect for him."
For a moment, Liverpool felt like destiny.
The pull of Paris
Then reality cut through the romance.
On that looping flight, as Klopp laid out his plans, Mbappé knew he was choosing between giants. "Whatever decision I take is going to be a good decision because we are talking about some of the biggest clubs in the world," he told the Liverpool manager.
The pressure finally told in one direction: home.
Mbappé opted for PSG. First on loan, then permanently for €180 million – a figure that underlined just how far he had already climbed before his 20th birthday. Born and raised in Paris, he could not resist the idea of becoming the star of his hometown.
"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’s dream dissolved. Paris got its prodigy.
From missed signing to global icon
What followed in France is already etched into modern football history. Mbappé exploded at PSG, stacking domestic trophies and Champions League runs, turning from prodigy into global icon.
On the international stage, he moved even faster. He won the World Cup with France as a teenager in 2018, a feat that pushed him into the lineage of the game’s greats. By the 2026 tournament, he had gone further still, overtaking Miroslav Klose and Lionel Messi to become the World Cup’s all-time leading scorer, even as France fell to eventual champions Spain in the semi-finals.
Liverpool watched from afar as the player they once courted on a private jet became the face of an era.
Madrid at last – and the echo of 2017
In 2024, the long-anticipated move finally came. Mbappé left France and joined Real Madrid, swapping Paris for the Bernabéu and stepping into the white shirt that had hovered over his career for years.
It closed one chapter and opened another. But the story of that secret flight with Klopp, his mother’s affection for Anfield, and the transfer that never was still hangs in the air.
Liverpool built a Champions League-winning, title-winning side without him. Mbappé became a superstar without them.
Yet the thought lingers: in a parallel football world, what would Mbappé at Anfield have looked like?
