The France striker, then an 18-year-old at Monaco, revealed the details of Liverpool's failed pursuit in an interview with The Athletic, describing his mother as a "big fan" of Jürgen Klopp who wanted him to move to Merseyside in 2016.
"I was close to joining Liverpool," he recalled. "The favourite destination for my mum was Liverpool. She wanted me to go there. I didn't listen because I wanted to play in my city, Paris.
"I didn't want to leave my country before I was someone. But yes, my mum was always saying, 'Liverpool - you're going to be there, playing at Anfield, it's going to be insane for you'."
His mother travelled to Merseyside for what Mbappé called the "first step" of the negotiation, watching matches alone to picture her son in the stadium.
"She went to the city, the stadium, she met the people. She was like, 'it's a wonderful club, everybody's so kind, it's a family club, a big club'. She went to Anfield and fell in love with it. She watched a few games alone, to feel the atmosphere, because she wanted to imagine me in this stadium."
Klopp, speaking as a pundit on Magenta TV at this year's World Cup, recalled Liverpool going as far as flying the entire family from Nice on a private jet in an attempt to seal the deal discreetly.
"We really went all out. Then we flew around in a circle, talked with the family, ate good food. We flew in a circle. It was fantastic. And then he went to Paris."
Mbappé, now 27, said family and hometown pride ultimately won out over his mother's preference: "It's a funny story. But in the end, I took the decision to go to PSG because for me, born and raised in Paris, there was no better feeling than to show I could be a star in my hometown."
He signed for PSG on loan with an option that became a permanent €180 million (£165.7m) deal, went on to become the club's record scorer across seven years in the French capital, and left for Real Madrid in 2024.