Liverpool were reportedly looking to sign Kylian Mbappe in 2022 after Jurgen Klopp signed him, but ended up with Darwin Nunez

Kylian Mbappé may never fulfil his mother's wish of playing for Liverpool, but that doesn't mean he hasn't come close to achieving it.

The Frenchman ended one of football's most predictable transfer sagas by joining real Madrid This summer but The interest of Anfield was also always present in his career..

Liverpool He was close to signing Mbappé when he was a teenager and left Monaco In 2017, with Jurgen Klopp holding talks with the forward.

The capture of the then 18-year-old on a lower salary but with high potential represented the type of signing that The club's American owners love to do it.

John W. Henry, director of Fenway Sports Group held a two-hour meeting with Mbappé's family in his private jet around the Bay of Nice.

However, the player's preference to remain in his homeland made his boyhood club… Paris Saint-Germain win the race for his signing.

His subsequent rise to become the face of European football in the post-Lionel Messi era and Cristiano Ronaldo The era should have ended all talk about Liverpool's net spending king, owner FSG sanctioning any future movement.

However, in any case, links between Mbappé and Merseyside increased during his time at PSG – helped by a courtship that developed in public.

Parisian outlet The team They have now sensationally claimed that the 25-year-old agreed a verbal agreement to join Liverpool two years ago.

Mbappe is said to have agreed a short-term deal at Anfield before signing a two-year contract extension with PSG in 2022.

The Ligue 1 giants were desperate to avoid doing business with Madrid if they had been forced into a sale that summer, but a provision was reportedly inserted into Mbappe's terms with Liverpool to facilitate a future move to the Bernabeu.

Does it all sound too fantastic to be true? Maybe it does, but let's look at the evidence that might prove that perhaps the signs were there all along…

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Klopp's early extension 'is good for transfer windows'

In April 2022, Klopp delighted Liverpool fans by announcing that he had signed a two-year extension to your contract.

His contract was not due to expire until 2024. Ironically, when he decided to leave the club. Still, the timing is significant.

The future of the Germans The veteran attacking trio of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané were much more urgent, with Each of the three is about to enter the final years of their contracts..

With all three attackers also approaching, or having already celebrated, their 30s at the time (historically when Liverpool owners FSG get nervous about offering wage increases), a decision needed to be made on whether they would sign new deals or be loaned out rather than risk losing them for free in 2023.

So why were negotiations accelerated and an extension announced with Klopp?

Well, a day before Liverpool's 1-0 win over Newcastle on April 30, Klopp said it “made sense” to confirm his commitment to the club before the end of the season, revealing that he could help the club's transfer business in the summer.

Mbappé: “My mother loves Liverpool”

Just 24 days after those comments from the Reds manager, Mbappé admitted in an interview that he had held talks with the club.

“We talked a little bit, but not too much. We talked a little bit,” Mbappé said. The telegraph“I spoke to Liverpool because it's my mother's favourite club; my mother loves Liverpool. I don't know why, you'll have to ask her.

“It's a good club and I met them five years ago. When I was in Monaco, I met them. It's a big club.”

During those 2022 negotiations, Klopp's future It would certainly have been discussed -with Mbappé is a big fan of the 57-year-oldwhose influence when deciding on a move to the Premier League cannot be underestimated.

Speaking to RMC Sport ahead of Liverpool's 2018 game against PSG, Klopp told RMC Sport: “I love him, to be honest. He's a great player and a good lad as well, he's a really good lad. What a player, what a player.”

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His 2022 assessment that his personal contract extension would help transfer business may have been a subtle hint to Mbappé, with talks ongoing at the time.

Big decision: Salah or Mbappé?

Liverpool would also have had to find replacements to cope with the potential double loss of Mane and Salah, who not only had higher wages than Firmino, but could each command a larger salary.

The former player joined Bayern Munich in June of that year.and the latter was very close to following in his bandmate's footsteps and leaving that same month.

Salah's lawyer and adviser Ramy Abbas Issa told a Harvard Business School study in 2023 that Liverpool were “far” behind in contract negotiations and feared a breakthrough would not be reached.

Finally, in July, The Egyptian became the highest-paid player in the club's history. on salaries exceeding £350,000 per week.

Those figures would have been impossible to offer with Mbappé also in the squad, and the delay in reaching an agreement was not due to arguing over the finer details.

As Salah's agent said for the purposes of the Harvard study and as reported The times“Mohamed is not going to throw away his contract because of a 5% difference between what we are asking for and what they are willing to give: it is much more than that.”

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Change of plans and new addition

Let's look at Liverpool's arrivals that summer, with just three senior player arrivals before the panic deadline for Arthur Melo's loan.

Two of them were teenagers at the time: right-back Calvin Ramsay arrived for £6.5m and Fabio Carvalho. Fulham.

The other was Darwin Nunezwho became the club's record signing when he arrived in June from Benfica in a deal worth up to £85m.

Liverpool are no strangers to shelling out money for players they feel are worth it, but the Uruguayan was arriving with increasing preparation.

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The Reds had been following Alisson Becker since his time at the Brazilian team International on the advice of his former star Doni before shelling out a world-record fee for a goalkeeper in 2018.

So confident was the club in Virgil van Dijk who waited six more months afterwards Southampton initially put up a hurdle in any movement Instead of turning towards another defender.

Nunez, 22 at the time, He had only two seasons of first division football under his belt but he was required to demonstrate a similar transformative effect on Liverpool's attack as he had had in defence.

Except the landscape with Mane, Divock original and Takumi Minamino leave, and contract talks with Salah and Firmino in a dead end – with The latter goes free. The following summer meant the club could no longer afford to risk continuing to struggle. Manchester CityWHO had just introduced Erling Haaland.

However, Nunez, who I couldn't even understand Klopp and needed a translator.It was announced as a Long-term project that would need time to adapt. in a way that no other expensive Liverpool signing had ever achieved.

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His transfer was widely pushed by Klopp after being impressed with the striker's performances for Benfica in the Champions League quarter-final match against his side.

Núñez scored both home and away in Benfica's 6-4 aggregate defeat to Liverpool in… you guessed it… April 2022.

Liverpool then signed Cody Gakpo. before the end of the year for a price of between 35 and 45 million pounds, having He avoided rivaling Manchester United and Leeds for services six months previously.

That's more than £100m for two players capable of playing either centre-back or left-wing, and almost £500,000 a week in wages with the cost of Nunez's arrival and Salah's new contract added…

Maybe it wasn't all so crazy after all?