In another life it’s Liverpool fans cheering on Kylian Mbappe from afar as he smashes it at the World Cup for France.
Mbappe is having an incredible tournament as he currently sits joint top of the tournament’s goalscoring charts on eight with Lionel Messi; Mbappe’s latest seeing him curl in a beauty during France’s quarter-final win over Morocco.
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Mbappe plies his trade at Real Madrid but before he wound up at the Bernabeu, Anfield could’ve been a destination for him.
In the summer of 2022, Mbappe was asked about Liverpool and said: “Now we talked to them a bit, but not much, in the end it was between Real Madrid and PSG.
“I have spoken to Liverpool because red is my mother’s favourite colour and she loves Liverpool. Why? I don’t know.
“We met with them a few years ago when I was at Monaco, it’s a great club.”
Charm offensive
However, it was more than just a brief chat when Mbappe was heading for the exit door at Monaco in 2017, with L’Equipe reporting the Reds’ owner took him on a two-hour flight.
Henry, whose Fenway Sports Group bought Liverpool in 2010, is the club’s principal owner, and he brought Mbappe and his family on a private jet tour around the bay of Nice while discussing his future.
During France’s 2-0 win over the Atlas Lions on Thursday, this meeting was confirmed by then-Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp.
Working as a pundit for German TV channel Magenta TV, the soon-to-be Germany boss said: “It was the most expensive non-transfer that we [Liverpool] invested in.
“We flew from Blackpool to Nice. In Nice, the whole Mbappe family got on board a private plane with five rooms or something.
“We really went big. Then we flew around in a circle, talked to the family, ate good food. We weren’t allowed to be seen. We flew in a circle. It was fantastic. And then he went to Paris.”
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As Klopp said, the forward opted for Paris Saint-Germain, signing initially on loan for a deal that cost a reported €180million [£157m].
Mbappe was then linked with a move to Liverpool as he grew increasingly unsettled in the French capital, however, he opted to join Real Madrid in the summer of 2024.
It hasn’t been smooth sailing for Mbappe at Los Blancos as he’s yet to win a league title or Champions League in his two years at the club.
Meanwhile, former club PSG have been European champions for the last two seasons.
But Mbappe’s stellar form at the World Cup shows exactly why Liverpool went to the trouble of trying to woo him into signing a contract with them.
Up next for Mbappe is a semi-final showdown with either Spain or Belgium on Tuesday, live on talkSPORT.
