Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappe at Arsenal?! How Gunners almost signed Real Madrid superstars as teenagers - with one deal worth just £500k and the other leaving Arsene Wenger heartbroken

Bellingham enjoyed a meteoric rise to prominence at Birmingham City, becoming the youngest player in the club's entire history when making his debut at 16 years and 38 days old against Portsmouth in a 2019 Carabao Cup tie. That was the first of 44 appearances Bellingham would make in what turned out to be his only full season in the Blues senior team, as Borussia Dortmund swooped to secure the midfielder's services for £25 million ($32m) in the summer of 2020.

It was a huge coup for the German giants, who reportedly fended off competition from Manchester United, Chelsea, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. But Bellingham could actually have been playing for Arsenal years before then had circumstances not conspired against them.

According to The Daily Mail, the Gunners made a formal approach for Bellingham when he was in Birmingham's U14s squad. Arsenal were willing to pay the £500,000 compensation required to bring the teenager to Emirates Stadium, but an 'unforeseen delay' of 48 hours on signing off that fee allowed the Blues to beat them to the punch.

Bellingham signed a contract with Birmingham instead, leaving Arsenal red-faced. That was not, however, the end of the club's pursuit of the English prodigy.

Tony Adams has claimed that Arsenal were also in pole position to sign Bellingham after his stunning breakthrough campaign at Birmingham. "He was spotted very early on, not by me, by the Arsenal recruitment office. The chief scout [Steve Morrow] was absolutely bowled over by him and the great prospect that he is. He had more or less done the deal," the Gunners icon told Sky Sports in November 2020.

On that occasion, though, a change in the boardroom led to the deal falling by the wayside, as Adams added: "At that moment the new sporting director Edu came in from Brazil and had no European experience and no UK experience. I think it got lost in the transition, Edu didn't know anything about this player. Unfortunately, the chief scout had the deal kind of done - we missed that one unfortunately. They are the type of players we need to get hold of at the Arsenal if we’re ever going to develop. These kind of players we need to tie up, get them to the Arsenal and build a phenomenal league team."

To this day, it's not clear whether Adams' story was 100 percent accurate - it seems unlikely that Edu would have neglected to push through a transfer for one of English football's most promising talents - but he's certainly right that Arsenal dropped the ball. Bellingham's subsequent success at Dortmund, and later Madrid, suggests he might have been able to push Arsenal over the line in their pursuit of a first Premier League title since 2003-04, and they only have themselves to blame for missing out, having failed to act quickly enough to capitalise on the groundwork put in by the scouting department.

Arsenal's interest in Mbappe can be traced even further back, all the way to the start of 2013. At that stage, the Frenchman was working his way through the academy ranks at AS Bondy, and former Gunners defender Gilles Grimandi was one of the scouts who had recognised his potential.

A then-14-year-old Mbappe held formal talks with Arsenal, but ultimately stayed in his homeland and joined Monaco, which Grimandi believes was a sporting decision rather than a financial one. "We just could not convince him," he admitted to The Sun. "He was out of contract in June 2013 and we met him in February. If we could have convinced him to join, he would have changed the club – but he then decided on Monaco. Arsenal were not always playing their best so it was quite complicated.

"At first it was easy, as soon as we talked to a player he wanted to sign. However, if you are not getting results it is difficult to bring top players to help the team. That’s why it is important to stay at the top for as long as possible. It is so much easier."

Mbappe graduated from the Monaco academy just two years later, and broke Thierry Henry's record as the club's youngest debutant when lining up in a Ligue 1 clash against Caen aged 16 years and 347 days. By the start of the 2016, Mbappe boasted a seemingly endless list of potential suitors as the most revered young prospect on the continent.

Arsenal were on it, and Wenger put in the legwork to make the transfer happen. "I went to his parents and tried to convince them," the former Gunners boss told French broadcaster TF1 last June. "At the time, he was a little shy, people were starting to ask him for his first autographs in Monaco."

Once again, though the Gunners' efforts proved fruitless. Mbappe opted to sign his first professional contract at Monaco in May of that year, committing his future to the club until 2019, but surprisingly, Wenger held no bitterness. "At the beginning of your career, you don't have too much pressure at the start and they managed to persuade him to extend it by promising him that he would play more easily at Monaco than at Arsenal, Liverpool or Real Madrid," he explained. "We can say that his parents advised him well and that he made the right decision."

Grimaldi, who had also been part of the team that tried to persuade Mbappe to choose Arsenal, added to Ladbrokes Fanzone: "We met his parents in London who came to the training ground and alongside Arsene and Richard Law [then transfer chief] we travelled to meet Kylian in the South of France. We tried, and I really don't think we were far from getting him, but he declined the project and signed a new deal with Monaco. I'd say it is probably the biggest disappointment in my 15 years as an Arsenal scout."

Monaco had managed Mbappe's minutes carefully in his first season with the senior team, but it was impossible to hold him back in the 2016-17 campaign. He became the main man in Leonardo Jardim's set-up, scoring 26 goals in all competitions as Monaco clinched their first Ligue 1 crown since 2000 and embarked on a surprise run to the Champions League semi-finals.

Six of Mbappe's goals came on Europe's biggest stage, including two in their thrilling round of 16 victory over Manchester City, and his stock went through the roof. According to France Football, Arsenal made one last ditch attempt to lure Mbappe to the Emirates, with Wenger holding a three-hour meeting with the attacker after he featured in a friendly game between France and England in June 2017.

A childhood picture of Mbappe wearing a yellow Arsenal shirt in 2004 had also started doing the rounds on social media as fans bought into intensifying transfer speculation. But, in the end, Mbappe snubbed Arsenal again, this time in favour of Paris Saint-Germain. PSG signed the France international on an initial loan deal with an obligation to buy for €180m (£152m/$200m) in 2018, and he headed to Parc des Princes to form one-third of one of the most deadly attacking triumvirates ever alongside Neymar and Edinson Cavani.

Wenger subsequently declared that Arsenal were "closer last year than this year because the competition was a bit smaller", which Mbappe more or less confirmed in an interview with The Telegraph. "Yes, I met with Arsene Wenger, who is a great coach," Mbappe said. "He has a great reputation here in France, he’s well-respected and knows how to develop young players. This was a real option for me. But, of course, Paris Saint-Germain was the main option. I decided to join Paris Saint-Germain because this is the project that will help me develop while I win titles."

Mbappe made the correct call again, as his haul of 12 domestic trophies as a PSG player underlines. Every time Arsenal made a move for Mbappe, they did so with one arm tied behind their backs due to their failure to challenge for the biggest honours in the second half of Wenger's reign.

"It was a footballing blow, and an obvious one too. Seeing a photo [of Mbappe wearing an Arsenal shirt in 2004], hurts my heart a little," Wenger admitted to TF1. That was one of several heartbreaking transfer sagas for Wenger, who has also previously opened up on failed moves for Luis Suarez, Yaya Toure, N'Golo Kante and Vincent Kompany.

It would seem that Wenger didn't have much, if any, involvement in Arsenal's negotiations for Bellingham, but he may also wonder what might have been had the Birmingham City academy graduate moved to north London, having described him as "Zinedine Zidane with power" on beIN Sports last year. One thing is certain: Arsenal's loss has most certainly been Real Madrid's gain.

Arsenal have re-established themselves as Premier League contenders under Arteta, but he's only delivered one FA Cup in his five years at the helm, and has yet to take the team beyond the Champions League quarter-finals. Now, Bellingham and Mbappe are out to make sure that Arteta's European woes continue.

Until he starts delivering tangible success, Arteta will have the same problem Wenger did in the transfer market. Claiming the scalp of Real would be a step in the right direction for him and Arsenal, but it remains to be seen whether his current crop of players will be able to rise to the occasion.