As Kylian Mbappe nears the end of his Paris Saint-Germain contract, plenty of Liverpool fans are looking at their club’s past interest in the Frenchman and thinking ‘maybe, just maybe’.
Jurgen Klopp’s side are by no means the front-runners when it comes to the French international. Real Madrid were strongly interested in 2022, before PSG tied their star man down to a big-money extension, and remain in the running this time around.
PSG themselves are not giving up either, reportedly making the 25-year-old a new offer as they aim to build a team around their younger talents. There was also apparent interest from Saudi Arabia last summer, and any approach from clubs there is likely to include significant financial incentives.
Liverpool supporters won’t give up on a deal until Mbappe signs on the dotted line, even if their chances are as slim as they come, and there has been interest before. Back in 2020, Klopp spoke with the forward’s father Wilfrid amid faint hopes of what could have been one of the club’s most sensational recent coups.
“What Liverpool do in this moment is amazing,” Mbappe told the BBC in January 2020 as the Merseyside club cruised towards the Premier League title. “They’re like a machine, they’ve found a rhythm and are like ‘we play again, we play again’.
“They’ve lost zero games. When you watch you think everything’s easy but that’s not easy. The guys are focused, they play games every three days and they win, they win, they win.
“Now the problem is that everybody watches Liverpool, and everybody watches what we can do against them, so now they have to show they are strong again but it’s a very good team with a very good manager.”
A couple of months later, French outlet Le10Sport reported that Klopp had spoken with Wilfrid Mbappe. The report claimed Klopp’s motivation was twofold: to personally sell his vision for Mbappe at Anfield and to make clear the Reds’ interest in a deal.
Reports at the time suggested Liverpool might be able to fund a deal through the sale of Sadio Mane. However, with the transfer market less active in the summer of 2020 after football’s Covid-19 hiatus, Mane stayed at Anfield for another two seasons.
Since the end of the 2019-20 season, Mbappe has scored an impressive 148 goals for Paris Saint-Germain, taking his total in the French capital to a club record 238. He also finished as the top scorer at the 2022 World Cup, though his hat-trick in the final wasn’t enough to give France back-to-back titles.
If a move to Liverpool was unlikely back then, that is even more so heading into the summer of 2024. And yet there are still a few optimistic fans who will still dare to dream.
