Kylian Mbappé Reveals Close Call with Liverpool in 2016
Kylian Mbappé has admitted just how close he came to becoming a Liverpool player in 2016 – and how he turned down his mother’s favourite move to chase a dream in Paris.
Back then he was 18, a frightening young talent at Monaco, already tearing up Ligue 1 and drawing every major club in Europe to his door. Liverpool were one of the first to make a serious play. They did not hold back.
His mother, Fayza Lamari, loved it.
Mbappé, now at Real Madrid and captain of France, told The Athletic that Liverpool were a genuine option before he chose Paris St-Germain, and that Anfield completely won over his family.
“I was close to [joining] Liverpool. The favourite destination for my mum was Liverpool. She wanted me to go there,” he said. “I didn’t listen because I wanted to play in my city, Paris. I didn’t want to leave my country before I was someone.”
For his mother, though, Merseyside felt like destiny.
“She was always saying, ‘Liverpool – you’re going to be there, playing at Anfield, it’s going to be insane for you’,” Mbappé recalled.
She even flew to England to feel it for herself. No entourage. No circus. Just a mother scouting out what might become her son’s new home.
Mbappé described it as the “first step” of negotiations. She walked the city. She went to the stadium. She met the people around the club. And she came back smitten.
“She went to the city, the stadium, she met the people. She was like, ‘it’s a wonderful club, everybody’s so kind, it’s a family club, a big club’,” he 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.”
While she was falling for Anfield, Liverpool were doing everything they could behind the scenes.
Jurgen Klopp, speaking later on Magenta TV during the 2026 World Cup, lifted the curtain on how far the club went to try to land Mbappé. The then-Liverpool manager detailed a cloak-and-dagger operation that underlined just how desperate the Reds were to win the race.
He revealed that Liverpool arranged a flight from Blackpool to Nice, with a private jet laid on for Mbappé and his family.
“The entire Mbappe family boarded a private jet with five rooms or something,” Klopp said. “We really went all out. Then we flew around in a circle, talked with the family, ate good food.”
They didn’t want to be seen meeting. No photographs. No leaks. Just a club trying to sell a vision to a teenager already on the brink of superstardom.
“We flew in a circle. It was fantastic. And then he went to Paris,” Klopp added, summing up the failed pursuit in one dry line.
Mbappé laughs about it now.
“It’s a funny story,” he said. But the decision itself, at the time, was anything but casual.
For him, the pull of home won out.
“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 joined PSG initially on loan from Monaco, with an option to buy set at 180m euros (£165.7m) – a figure that underlined the scale of the talent Liverpool had narrowly missed. The deal became permanent and Mbappé spent seven seasons in Paris, rewriting the club’s record books and becoming their all-time leading scorer before finally making his long-anticipated move to Real Madrid in 2024.
Liverpool were left with a story of what might have been. Mbappé was left with a career path that stayed true to his roots, even if it meant saying no to his mother and the roar of Anfield.
