Farewell, Sadio Mane: One of the all-time Liverpool greats

After six years, 268 appearances, 120 goals and six trophies, it's time to bid farewell one of the most influential Liverpool players ever.

Throughout most of my football-watching life, I’ve been used to the idea that Liverpool have occupied a certain level in the overall European football food chain. A while before Twitter was the go-to place for transfer updates, I vividly remember that gut-wrenching feeling while watching BBC News one morning in August 2004, when the news of Michael Owen’s departure to Real Madrid was confirmed. He was my hero growing up, and the concept of him no longer playing for Liverpool seemed almost inconceivable.

In July 2005, that same sinking feeling struck again when it looked as though Steven Gerrard was on his way to Chelsea. Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano joining Real Madrid and Barcelona in back-to-back summers was deflating, though it didn’t sting nearly as much as seeing Fernando Torres move to Chelsea. When Luis Suarez joined Barcelona in the summer of 2014, it came as no surprise, but to lose one of the best strikers in world football was still massively disappointing – even more so given how disastrously that money was reinvested.

Man City plucking Raheem Sterling away was another tough one to take, and Philippe Coutinho moving to Barcelona half-way through the 2017/18 season felt like a heavy blow at a critical point in Liverpool’s growth under Jürgen Klopp. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to act as if selling the Brazilian was always going to work out absolutely fine, but it’s worth remembering that at the time, he was performing at a consistently world class level week in, week out. Klopp obviously handled the situation to perfection, and Liverpool became a much more balanced and formidable team for it, but bidding farewell to such an instrumental figure in the middle of a campaign which had so much riding on it did carry a significant risk. 

Ever since, however, the landscape has changed completely. Piece by piece, Klopp has turned Liverpool from a convenient stepping stone towards the Spanish giants (or English clubs with superior resources) into a place where a bunch of the best players in the world have chosen to spend the prime years of their career. No longer do players feel the need to move to fulfil their ambitions, because they know they can win all the major honours by staying at Liverpool, and elevate their own game to the absolute highest level in the process.

They might not be paid quite as handsomely as they would at other top clubs, but they know they can build a legacy for themselves and earn the kind of warmth and adoration that makes it all worthwhile. As Coutinho discovered, the grass isn’t necessarily greener elsewhere. 

Within that context, it’s difficult to know exactly how to feel about Sadio Mane moving to Bayern Munich. Unlike the superstars of years gone by, he’s not moving on because he doesn’t feel he can achieve what he wants to at Liverpool, but precisely because he has already conquered every objective and wants to pursue a fresh challenge. The closest reference point is Gini Wijnaldum joining PSG last summer, but he was a bracket or two below the levels of greatness Mane has achieved across his six years at the club. He is, by quite a distance, the highest profile player Liverpool have bid farewell to in the Klopp era. 

Unequivocally, he leaves Liverpool as one of the greatest players in the club’s 130-year history, his legendary status long since secured. In 268 appearances across six years, he has racked up 120 goals, all of them from open play (including 19 with his head, and 30 on his supposedly ‘weaker’ left foot), while playing an integral role in winning every single competition Liverpool have entered in that time. 

Mane has built up such an extensive catalogue of decisive performances that it’s almost impossible to single out one defining moment of his Liverpool career. The last-gasp winner at Goodison Park in 2016/17, the hat-trick against Porto in that luminous orange kit in 2017/18, the brace against Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena in 2018/19, the stoppage-time winner against Aston Villa away in 2019/20 and his sumptuous volley against Man City at Wembley in the FA Cup semi-final of the season just gone are a few of the iconic contributions that spring to mind. Even though he didn’t score, his performance in the 4-0 triumph against Barcelona at Anfield was heroic, too.

There are plenty more moments that don’t get talked about as much as they probably should, simply because there have been so many. His backheel chip against Watford in 2018/19 is a prime example, the kind of goal that most players wouldn’t even think of attempting, let alone having the confidence and technique to actually execute it so impudently.

Mane’s influence at Liverpool has been about so much more than goals alone, though. When you think back to his arrival in the summer of 2016, there was plenty of noise from various pundits, rival supporters and indeed those of a Liverpool persuasion, about whether £34m was too high a price for a player widely perceived to be ‘streaky’ during his time at Southampton. Earlier that window, Liverpool had been very strongly linked with Mario Götze before he decided to stay in Germany and swap Borussia Dortmund for Bayern Munich. Mane, back then, was seen by many as an underwhelming alternative. 

Yet from his competitive debut at the Emirates on the opening day of the 2016/17 campaign, as he surged down the right wing and sliced his way through the Arsenal defence before cutting inside, lashing a fearsome strike into the top corner and proceeding to piggy-back on a delirious Klopp in celebration, it was immediately clear that Mane had single-handedly transformed the dynamic of Liverpool’s attack. 

What Liverpool had sorely missed – a speed demon capable of hurting teams from out wide, to complement the trickery and movement of Coutinho and Roberto Firmino – Mane offered in spades. He provided a totally different outlet with his aggression and willingness to make darting, diagonal runs in behind opposition defences, as well as possessing the killer instinct to arrive in prime goal scoring positions in the box.

Off the ball, meanwhile, his unrelenting work ethic set the bar for others to aspire to. That unteachable knack of being able to wriggle out of the tightest of spaces, use either foot to devastating effect and to outmuscle opponents of a far greater physical stature while somehow retaining possession, is all part of the package that has made him such a uniquely valuable asset. In so many ways, he has epitomised the very essence of Klopp’s Liverpool. 

Throughout that 2016/17 season, his presence elevated Liverpool from a patchy Europa League team capable of occasional brilliance into a team ready to compete in the Champions League once more. Following his injury in the 3-1 win against Everton at Anfield in early April 2017, Liverpool had to adopt a much more pragmatic approach to haul themselves over the line for a top four finish. Without Mane, it wasn’t possible to attack with anywhere near the same verve and incision.

Ultimately, everything that Liverpool have won under Klopp has been built on the foundations laid in that 2016/17 season, which opened the door to Liverpool signing the likes of Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Alisson Becker and Fabinho, and, in turn, becoming the juggernaut they are today. It would be unfair to overlook all the others who contributed so much that season as well, but Mane, I would argue, was the catalyst that really accelerated Liverpool’s return to the elite. 

Perhaps the most impressive thing about his Liverpool career, above all else, is that he’s achieved what he has while playing everywhere across the forward line. Having initially excelled on the right, he not only willingly accepted being shifted over to the opposite flank to accommodate Salah, but raised his game to a whole new level in doing so. For a period between January 2019 and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, he was arguably the best player in the world in that position. 

It’s fitting, in a sense, that he rounds off his Liverpool journey as a centre forward, completing his evolution as one of the most gifted and versatile forwards of his generation, capable of bending games to his will from any part of the pitch. It’s a role which has given him a new lease of life in recent months after it had started to look like he was on a clear downwards trajectory, and it may well be where he squeezes the most out of the next few years of his career as he moves deeper into his 30s and his searing natural speed gradually wanes. 

Whether moving Mane into the middle was the grand plan all along, or whether it came about more by circumstance following the instant impact of Luis Diaz since his arrival from Porto in January, would be genuinely fascinating to find out. It’d be very interesting, too, to know when Mane decided to pursue a move away and what prompted him to make that call – because up until the week leading up to the Champions League final, there was nothing to suggest that this was the plan all along. 

Whereas in the past, a player of Mane’s standing deciding to walk away might have been considered a catastrophe, that couldn’t be further from the case now. All great teams need to continually evolve, and as phenomenal as Mane has been, it’s no bad thing that his departure has instigated the next phase of Liverpool’s ongoing succession planning around the front three. Although they might’ve happily kept him for the final year of his contract, Mane pushing for a move now has enabled Liverpool to generate the funds they’d have missed out on next summer, covering a significant proportion of the up-front fee for Darwin Nunez. 

The Uruguayan might not have Mane’s pedigree, and it’ll take some time for him to become fully attuned to the specifics of Liverpool’s system, but crucially, he’s seven years younger. If all goes well, and he continues on the kind of trajectory that saw him bag a goal every 76 minutes in the Primeira Liga for Benfica last season, Liverpool will have one of Europe’s top strikers on their hands for the prime years of his career. There’s still a puzzle to be figured out around the futures of Salah and Firmino, but with Nunez and Diaz already on board, plus Diogo Jota (and Fabio Carvalho, depending on which position he settles in), Liverpool have already safeguarded the future of their attack with a minimum of fuss. 

The euphoric memories Mane has created and the golden era of success he has paved the way for will forever be etched into Liverpool’s heritage, his name inextricably attached to some of the most exhilarating times in the club’s history. As the first member of the iconic front three departs, there is, of course, an unavoidable sense of sadness – but in football, as in life, all good things must eventually come to an end, and there’s every reason to be hugely excited about what comes next.

All things considered, this is one of those moves where everyone – Liverpool, Mane and Bayern Munich – comes out of it a winner.