{"id":779186,"date":"2026-09-22T19:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T19:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/779186\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T19:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T19:28:09","slug":"kylian-mbappe-reveals-he-was-close-to-joining-liverpool-in-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/779186\/","title":{"rendered":"Kylian Mbappe reveals he was &#8216;close&#8217; to joining Liverpool in 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mbappe, now 27, said his mother went out to Liverpool for the &#8220;first step&#8221; of the negotiation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;She went to the city, the stadium, she met the people. She was like, &#8216;it&#8217;s a wonderful club, everybody&#8217;s so kind, it&#8217;s a family club, a big club&#8217;, said Mbappe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Klopp, who spoke about the possible move on Magenta TV as a pundit at the 2026 World Cup, explained how a flight was taken from Blackpool to Nice in France, where &#8220;the entire Mbappe family boarded a private jet with five rooms or something&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We really went all out. Then we flew around in a circle, talked with the family, ate good food,&#8221; Klopp said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said they had not wanted to be seen having talks &#8211; but the meeting proved fruitless.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We flew in a circle. It was fantastic. And then he went to Paris,&#8221; Klopp added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a funny story,&#8221; said Mbappe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mbappe later joined PSG on loan, in a deal including an option for the move to become permanent for 180m euros (\u00a3165.7m). He went on to spend seven years in Paris, becoming the club&#8217;s record scorer before leaving for Real Madrid in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mbappe, now 27, said his mother went out to Liverpool for the &#8220;first step&#8221; of the negotiation. &#8220;She&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-779186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}