Klopp Drops Decade-Old Mbappe Transfer Lore

Whilst working the France-Morocco World Cup quarter-final as a pundit for Magenta TV, former Liverpool FC manager Jürgen Klopp casually dropped some old transfer lore about LFC’s pursuit of Kylian Mbappe when he was at Monaco:

Klopp: The most expensive non-transfer we [Liverpool] invested in. We flew from Blackpool to Nice. In Nice, the entire Mbappé family boarded a private jet with five rooms or something.

J.B. Kerner: A plane that big?

Klopp: Yes, yes, we really went all out. Then we flew around in a circle, talked with the family, ate good food…

J.B Kerner: In the plane?

Klopp: Yes.

J.B. Kerner: Wait, you didn’t want to be seen?

Klopp: We couldn’t be seen.

J.B. Kerner: You couldn’t be seen.

J.B. Kerner: They boarded and you just flew in a circle?

Klopp: We flew in a circle. It was fantastic. And then he went to Paris….

First of all, big fan of any mention of legendary Liverpool transfer institution Blackpool. It’s ancient news now, but it’s always fun whenever someone reveals the inner workings of the club’s transfer dealings, especially deals that never came to fruition. The Mbappe links were always strange in that they seemed more concrete than the usual lazy bullshit links, although the player felt like one who was out of reach for Liverpool, even after Klopp had restored the club to elite European status. Mbappe revealed a few years ago that his mother was a Liverpool fan, and now we know the full extent of that pursuit.