'In five years, you'll come back with £50m for him': How Chelsea missed chance to sign Kylian Mbappe

On 17th May 2011, a then 12-year-old Kylian Mbappe was given permission to travel to London for a four-day trial at Chelsea. His escort was Daniel Boga a former scout of Chelsea. His parents Wilfried and Fayza Mbappe joined him on that trip.

The long and short of the story is that Mbappe didn't impress the Blues enough for them to sign him.

Chelsea's attitude after watching Mbappe was 'let's see how it goes.'

"After the game finished, we were speaking in the office with Jim (Fraser, Chelsea’s head of youth recruitment) and they said, ‘Yeah, when he’s got the ball he is amazing, etc. But we want to see this hunger’,” Boga explained on The Athletic.

“You know English football — you tackle, you track back players when you lose the ball. He wasn’t like that. When he lost the ball, he stopped playing,” Boga explains.

“So Chelsea said, ‘We want to see him again and we want to see this part of his football’.

“But then the mum said, ‘No, we won’t come again’. I was translating. “She said, ‘Tell them, he won’t come back.

"If you want to sign him, you sign him now’. And she said, ‘In five years’ time, you will come back for him for £50million’. She said, ‘Translate that’.”

In five years Mbappe was worth more than twice what his mother told Chelsea and PSG were glad to pay it.

Today, there's absolutely no chance that Mbappe will ever play for Chelsea. Then again, no one can guarantee that he would be the superstar he is today if he had been signed by Chelsea.

Source: The Athletic