The last four years has witnessed a meteoric rise to prominence of 26-year-old. Sadio Mané was born in April 1992 and began his career in France with Metz. Austrian club, Red Bull Salzburg came calling in 2012 and Metz obliged for about €4 million, the third highest transfer fee they received for a player. After two years, during which Mane helped the Austrian Bundesliga and Austrian Cup, he was snapped up by premier league side, Southampton, on a four-year deal.
In his first season in England, Mané set a new Premier League record for the fastest hat-trick when he scored three times in 176 seconds during a 6–1 routing of Aston Villa. He was sold to Liverpool after just one season with the Saints for £34 million – the most expensive African player in history at that time – where he quickly established himself as one of the first names on the weekly team-sheet.
One season into his Liverpool career, Mané was named in the PFA Team of the Year and awarded the Liverpool Player of the Season, despite missing the latter part of the campaign through injury. Two years down the line, he filed out for the 5-time European champions in yet another Champion League final, which they lost to the only club with more European Cups, Real Madrid.
Mané has earned over 40 caps for Senegal since his debut in 2012, representing the national team at the 2012 Olympics, as well as the 2015 and 2017 Africa Cup of Nations. The 2018 FIFA World Cup is his first, but he will be looking unassumingly to surpass the quarter-final achievements of another liverpool great and compatriot, El-Hadji Diouf, after helping to win the country win their World Cup opener against Poland; giving Africa her first tournament points in what has been a largely disappointing World Cup so far for Africa in Russia.
Mane is famed for his quick feet and his swiftness, but as highlighted by his German Coach, Jurgen Klopp, the winger’s decision-making is his most significant quality. Klopp says: “Everyone thinks about how quick he is with his legs and that’s true but he’s quick in mind, that’s maybe the more impressive skill.” He laces this with a mixture of trickery, technique and dynamism and has been direct, decisive, and many times, the difference for club and country.
Mane may not be his team’s most important player but in so short a while, he established himself amongst the premier talents in the English game. Yet, he still pretty much wears the same countenance as a young aspiring footballer. This humility has been pointed out as probably Mane’s most striking off-field attribute, and according to his national team coach and former Teranga Lion, Aliou Cisse, Liverpool’s Number 19 is a “unique” talent and “one of the best players in the world”. Cisse first encountered Mane when he was appointed coach of the 2012 Olympic team and praised the 26-year-old’s “humility” because his exploits from that time to the present – notably in Liverpool’s run to the Champions League final – have not changed his person.