Jurgen Klopp has lifted the lid on one of Liverpool’s most ambitious transfer attempts of the modern era, revealing that the club went as far as arranging a private jet and hospitality for Kylian Mbappe and his family in an effort to bring the France striker to Anfield.
The story underlines just how seriously Liverpool viewed Mbappe even before he became one of the defining forwards of his generation. In 2017, when he was still emerging at Monaco, the club were prepared to make a strong personal pitch. The outcome, however, was familiar to many elite transfer pursuits: Mbappe ultimately chose Paris St-Germain.
What Liverpool were trying to do
Klopp’s account is a reminder that top-level recruitment is often about more than wages and contract length. For a player of Mbappe’s profile, clubs also try to sell a vision: the manager, the project, the pathway to trophies and the feeling of being wanted. Liverpool’s decision to organise travel and food for Mbappe and his family shows how far they were willing to go to make that impression.
At the time, Liverpool were building toward the team that would later dominate under Klopp, but they were still in the process of assembling the squad that would eventually win major honours. Missing out on a player of Mbappe’s calibre did not derail that trajectory, yet it does highlight the scale of the challenge facing clubs outside the very top financial powers when competing for generational talent.
Why the Mbappe miss still matters
For supporters, the revelation is both frustrating and fascinating. It offers a glimpse into how close Liverpool may have come to landing a superstar who would have transformed the club’s attacking ceiling. Mbappe’s pace, direct running and finishing would have fit naturally into Klopp’s high-intensity system, where transitions and space in behind are central to the game model.
Instead, Liverpool had to pursue other solutions in the market, and the club’s later success showed that elite recruitment is not defined by one missed target. Still, the Mbappe episode remains a striking example of how Liverpool tried to operate at the very top of the transfer market, combining sporting ambition with personal attention in an attempt to win over a player before PSG secured the deal.
It is also a useful snapshot of the transfer landscape in 2017, when Liverpool were already thinking big but were still up against the gravitational pull of clubs able to offer different financial and sporting guarantees. Klopp’s revelation adds another layer to the long-running discussion about what might have been had Mbappe chosen Merseyside instead of Paris.
Source note: This article was prepared using publicly available information from BBC Sport and expanded with editorial context.
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