After it seemed last summer that Kylian Mbappe’s future at Paris Saint-Germain had been decided, Liverpool were given a ridiculous fee on request.
Mbappe has been a long-standing, albeit unofficial, Liverpool target since his first breakthrough at Monaco, although a move to Anfield has rarely been seen as real.
This did not prevent the club from trying several times to assess the Frenchman’s interest in joining, including last summer, when he was close to leaving PSG.
Speaking to The Telegraph in May, after he turned around with Real Madrid and agreed a new contract that brings him about 1 million pounds a week, Mbappe even said that he had been in talks with Jurgen Klopp.
The figures associated with Mbappe’s deal with PSG should be enough to explain why he never moved to Merseyside.
"Sorry, 400?"@MarioCortegana says Liverpool made an approach for Kylian Mbappe last summer – and were quoted €400m by PSG…
🎙️ 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗔𝗧𝗛𝗟𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗖 𝗙𝗢𝗢𝗧𝗕𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗣𝗢𝗗𝗖𝗔𝗦𝗧 pic.twitter.com/9aqerHBJ9Y
— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) January 19, 2023
But now Mario Cortegana of The Athletic has revealed the price PSG set for their No. 7 when Liverpool contacted Liverpool again after the 24-year-old put pen to paper.
In July, Mbappe “expressed discomfort to the management about the direction in which PSG is moving, demanding “a good enough team to seriously fight for the Champions League title.”
This led to PSG deciding to “open the door for him, but not for Real Madrid.”
It was then, according to Cortegana, that Liverpool made another request, but President Nasser Al-Khelaifi and transfer consultant Antero Henrique said that any deal would cost 400 million euros.
This is not a typo: 400 million euros or about 350 million pounds.
Of course, frankly speaking, this is an exorbitant fee for any player, regardless of the abilities of a talent like Mbappe.
Liverpool broke their transfer record by signing Darwin Nunez from Benfica a month before they asked about Mbappe’s availability, allocating up to 85 million pounds.
Obviously, Mbappe can be considered excluded from the Liverpool squad, unless a completely unrealistic scenario develops in which he intends to join his mother’s favorite club for free and agrees to a salary cut of about 70 percent.
Instead, it seems like it’s Real Madrid or overkill.
