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When Liverpool signed Sadio Mané, 24, in 2016, he was the newest in a line of skill in Southampton to follow a well-marked path from St Mary’s to Anfield.
The initial 34 million pounds in cash, the highest movement payment for an African player in history, which has since been surpassed several times, and this marked Jurgen Klopp’s first primary addition to the Liverpool team when he began to unite the red revolution he had promised on the first day.
Fast forward 4 years and Klopp’s prediction that, despite everything, the name of the championship returns to the red part of Merseyside has become a reality, with Mané proving to be a centerpiece of the puzzle.
Together with Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino, the Senegalese winger has shaped one of the most feared front lines in world football, delivering the Champions League, Super Cup, World Club and Premier League in just 14 months.
Mané’s path to the most sensible one was not easy and, despite his reputation as the most productive footballer in the region, as he grew up in the small town of Bambali, his circle of relatives never sought him out to pursue his emerging skill as a career.
Mané’s circle of relatives is Bambali’s imams and he hoped to set a good example, focusing on school paintings and instead achieving a higher point of education.
The locally known player as Ballonbuwa, the ball wizard, knew he would have to leave the village to pursue his dream, but he was also aware that that would mean challenging his family.
“There’s no way they’re going to let me go, ” said Mané. “Not in my life. So one day it occurred to me that it was time and I talked to a guy from the village. He said, “I have a friend in Dakar with a team there.”
“Just when I heard this name, Dakar, which is the capital of Senegal, I thought” of course it will be wonderful for me. It’s my dream, I take the opportunity.”
Mané kept his plan a secret, entrusting only his friend Luc Djiboune with his goal of fleeing and checking his luck, and one morning at 6 a.m. he left home without saying a word to make the long bus trip to Dakar.
While studying for two weeks with the team and staying in a space that his village friend had organized, in Bambali, his friend Luke struggled to reveal where he had gone.
Luke explained in Mané Made’s documentary in Senegal: “People would say, “If you don’t talk, they’ll beat you.” And I thought, “You can hit me, but I don’t speak.”
After two weeks of searching, Mané’s circle of relatives discovered him and he was taken back to Bambali, one day he described as “the worst of my life,” and said he felt “hatred” for his circle of relatives at the time. Undeterred and determined to continue football, he launched an ultimatum.
“I said, ‘I’ll go back to the village on the condition that I have a year of school. That’s it.’ And they respected my decision.
After the end of the school year, I was tracked down because I said, “It’s over. Now it’s football, football.”
Mané returned to the Dakar to take part in the tests at the Generation Foot Academy, which he saw as a golden opportunity to play effectively at a European club and a footballer. The flying forward breathed without delay and over the next six months he called the academy his home.
There he spotted it through Olivier Perrin, a skilled scout for the French national team FC Metz, who said that Mané was turning it into a “video game” and had taken it to Europe for the first time.
A start has raised fears that his career will end before it begins, but he moves to Red Bull Salzburg and Southampton followed shortly after, before longtime admirer Jurgen Klopp arrived to call.
“My first meeting with Sadio, ” said Klopp. “It was in Dortmund. There was a very young boy sitting there, his baseball cap was crooked, the blonde series he still has today.
“He looked like a rookie rapper. I don’t think I have time for this.”
“I’d say I have a very smart feeling for people, but I’m wrong.”
It was an opposite functionality of Klopp’s Liverpool that possibly, in spite of everything, would have convinced the manager to make the move, when Mané came in as Southampton’s half-time replacement in 2-0 to turn the game around and score twice.
“I’m this insignificant player who just gave a massive performance,” he said. “Liverpool a club that saw the players who tired them, so they couldn’t say no.”