Kylian Mbappe has revealed that he was close to joining Liverpool in 2016, when he was an 18-year-old playing for Monaco in Ligue 1. The France and Real Madrid striker said Liverpool tried to sign him, and that his mother was a “big fan” of former Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp and wanted her son to move to Merseyside.
Speaking to The Athletic, Mbappe said his mother’s preferred destination was Liverpool. “I was close to [joining] Liverpool. The favourite destination for my mum was Liverpool. She wanted me to go there,” he said. He added that he did not listen because he wanted to play in his city, Paris, and did not want to leave his country before he was someone. His mother, he said, repeatedly told him he would be playing at Anfield and that it would be “insane” for him.
Mbappe, now 27, said his mother travelled to Liverpool for the “first step” of the negotiation. She visited the city and the stadium and met people at the club. “She was like, ‘it’s a wonderful club, everybody’s so kind, it’s a family club, a big club’,” Mbappe said. He also said she went to Anfield and fell in love with it, watching a few games alone to feel the atmosphere and to imagine him in the stadium.
Klopp later discussed the attempted move while appearing on Magenta TV as a pundit at the 2026 World Cup. He explained that a flight was taken from Blackpool to Nice in France, where “the entire Mbappe family boarded a private jet with five rooms or something”. Klopp said Liverpool “really went all out”, with the group flying around in a circle, talking with the family and eating good food. He said they had not wanted to be seen having talks, but the meeting proved fruitless. “We flew in a circle. It was fantastic. And then he went to Paris,” Klopp added.
Mbappe described the episode as “a funny story”, but said his eventual decision was shaped by a desire to succeed in his hometown. “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,” he said.
Mbappe later joined Paris Saint-Germain on loan, in a deal that included an option for the move to become permanent for 180m euros (£165.7m). He spent seven years in Paris, becoming the club’s record scorer before leaving for Real Madrid in 2024. He is France’s all-time leading goalscorer.