Liverpool supporters are renowned across the world for the wit, colour and originality of their flags and banners.
Some are dedicated to celebrated Liverpool figures whose efforts on the pitch or in the dug out (or during the long fight for Hillsborough justice) have made them into legends.
Others like ‘Joey Ate The Frogs Legs’ are in honour of less obvious heroes and have achieved cult status almost as much the people or events they commemorate.
Sometimes they’re just delightfully obscure and surreally self-mocking like ‘This is a sheet’.
The creativity constantly being displayed is constant source of wonder particularly in comparison to many of the English clubs whose fans rarely stretch themselves any further than a St George’s Cross with Telford (or wherever) Reds or Blues on it.
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Liverpudlians can occasionally be overly wordy but every so often hit the sweet spot with a short, punchy slogan which sums up when many are thinking at the time and a perfect example would be the one which emerged early in Rafa Benitez’s time as manager in tribute to a young Reds midfielder who was rapidly winning hearts and minds on the Kop.
With the simple backdrop of the African nation the player hailed from and with a small You’ll Never Walk Alone slogan on the bottom, it read simply: Momo Is Boss.
And he was. Certainly in the early months of his Anfield arrival before he suffered what at the time was feared to be a career-ending eye injury which he later admitted meant he was never quite the same player afterwards.
The Mali international was signed by Benitez in the summer of 2005 as he looked to build on his miraculous first season in charge which saw the Reds win a fifth European Cup after the unforgettable fightback from three goals down against AC Milan in Istanbul.
Sissoko had already worked with Benitez before, the Spanish boss having brought the French-born midfielder to Valencia in 2003 after the-then 18-year-old had spent two years in Auxerre’s well-regarded youth set up where the teenager, then a striker, had scored 50 times in two seasons.
He played an active part in ‘Los Murciélagos’s’ La Liga and UEFA Cup double triumph in Benitez’s final season before he left for Merseyside, making nine league starts and a further nine appearances in Europe, and after another positive campaign in 2004/05 a move to the Premier League beckoned.
Initially however it seemed he would be playing his football on the other side of Stanley Park.
Everton seemed to have a £3.5m deal lined up to bring him to Goodison Park until Liverpool stepped in with a £5.6m offer which proved more appealing both to Valencia and the player, much to David Moyes’s disappointment.
"I felt it was a deal which we were very close to completing and we were disappointed not to sign him," the Blues boss said.
"We were completing it for a lot less than Liverpool actually paid for him. I met the boy in Amsterdam and I thought we had a chance but, in the end, I suppose it was a bit like getting gazumped when you're buying a house.
“It's gone now. He had those qualities we were looking for, but we were in for a lot of players in the summer. For different reasons, some we got and some we didn't."
After completing Sissoko’s signing the day after Liverpool began their 2005/06 campaign on the unfeasibly early date of 13 July due to UEFA’s insistence that the Champions League holders - who hadn’t gained entry for the new season’s competition through league placings - had to qualify through the first preliminary stage, Benitez told of his pleasure at sealing his new acquisition and the high expectations he had of him.
"Sissoko was a player that grew a lot with us and he's a fantastic boy”, Benitez said.
“He was called the new Vieira a few years ago. He has incredible ability for his age. He is 20, I saw Vieira when he was 18-years old and he was no better than Sissoko. Sissoko runs more than Vieira and in a couple of years will be more dynamic.
"I like to sign hungry players and, with time, he can be much better than Patrick Vieira, but I don't want to put Momo under pressure. He is improving every day.
“We knew Everton were trying to sign him but, once we knew he was available, it was easy for us. He can become very important for the team - when we talk about clean sheets, if you have Sissoko in front of you running all the time, where you would have had to deal with 10 balls, now you only have four coming through. It also means that Gerrard or Xabi can think more offensively. Momo is a different kind of player to what we have.”
Sissoko himself said: "Any player in the world would have done the same as me. Between the two offers, I had to go for The Reds because they are the champions of Europe and I already knew Rafa Benitez.”
After making his Liverpool debut as a second half substitute for Steven Gerrard in the Champions League second qualifying round first leg tie against Lithuanian minnows FBK Kaunas, Sissoko made his Anfield bow from the start in the second leg a week later and Benitez included in the starting line up for the Reds’ first three Premier League games of the campaign against Middlesbrough, Sunderland and Tottenham.
He was in and out of the side over the next month, featuring mostly as a substitute, but after being restored to the team for the home win over Blackburn in mid-October established himself as first choice with his rangy style, athletic tackling and ability to get around the pitch effectively bearing out the manager’s comparisons to Patrick Vieira albeit without the goal output.
The Vieira parallels extended to his disciplinary record as well with Benitez commenting after Sissoko picked up a seventh booking of the season in the eventful 5-3 FA Cup third round win at Luton Town, "He will learn. The problem for him at the moment is everything's new.
“It's a new club, a new style of football and a new language. He just needs to analyse the situation a bit more. I'm very happy with him since he joined because he has contributed a lot.
“The positives are greater than the negatives. I prefer to have a player with high energy rather than someone who is calm. He is the kind of player we've been missing. We are working with him and we are always talking to him about things he can learn."
The penny seemed to be dropping with Sissoko’s ability to learn quickly and mature alongside those around him becoming rapidly evident but, just three days after being part of the first Liverpool side to beat Manchester United in the FA Cup since 1921, he suffered the serious eye injury which ultimately cast a shadow over the rest of his career during Liverpool’s Champions League last 16 first leg tie away at Portuguese giants Benfica.
With the match goalless just before the half hour mark, Sissoko challenged for the ball against Brazilian midfielder Beto and was caught in the eye by the Benfica man’s reckless high boot, which did see him receive a yellow card.
Immediately substituted, scans soon revealed damaged to his retina as well as a laceration to the eyelid with a medic in the Lisbon hospital he was being treated in delivering the devastating news the 21-year-old’s football career may be over.
“I’ll always remember that moment,” he told The Athletic in a May 2020 interview.
“The doctor said to me, ‘I think football is finished for you’. I was in shock. I was only 21 and I was playing for Liverpool. I just felt so sad.
“I knew as soon as I got the kick that it was serious. It was so painful. I couldn’t see anything out of that eye. It was scary.
“I was angrier with the doctor at the hospital than with the Benfica player, to be honest. At that moment, I entered depression. There were some really tough days.
“In football, you have to accept that there’s always a chance you could get badly hurt in a game but I said to myself a lot, ‘Why me?’
“When the doctor in Portugal said I might not get the sight back in that eye and I might not play again I just thought, ‘How can you say this?’ I told myself, ‘No, this isn’t possible. You are going to do everything you possibly can to come back from this’.
“It was a very bad moment for me, but I believe in God. I’m a Muslim and I was praying a lot — that helped me to come through it.
“Liverpool treated me so good and all the love and all the messages I got from the supporters helped to give me strength.”
Despite initially being unable to see a torch being shone into his eye from an inch away and with no certainty his vision would ever fully return to its previous state, Sissoko remarkably made his first team comeback exactly one month later by playing the full 90 minutes of Liverpool’s 7-0 FA Cup quarter-final win at Birmingham City.
Inevitably he experienced some anxiety over returning to football and did not feel comfortable enough with protective goggles to wear them during matches but his own determination to get playing again along with huge support from team-mates, the club and supporters aided his recovery.
“The eye is better every day. It is not 100%, maybe 80%,” he admitted.
“I can see almost on a daily basis the improvement and the doctor reassures me. If you compare it with how it was at the beginning, it’s certainly better. I hope there will be no permanent damage.
“When I was able to play again, the first time I headed the ball it was difficult mentally, but by building up gradually in training and by doing more head-work and increasing the physical contact that comes as part of normal training sessions, your confidence grows and the fear goes away. I don’t feel anything like that now.
“At the time I was very concerned, but with the support of everyone, all my loved ones, people at the club and the manager, I’ve got through it. The amazing thing that helped me close the book on the whole episode and put it behind me is that I came back a lot quicker than I thought and that has given me a huge lift.
“Before the Birmingham match I had a quiet moment. I was asking myself a lot of questions. ‘Will I be the same player? Will my vision be affected? Will I be able to see enough to play? If I get a knock, will it be worse?’
“But as soon as the game started, everything else went out of my head and the Liverpool fans gave me such a huge welcome that it helped take the fear away.”
Sissoko returned to Anfield three days later and immediately showed his resilience and fortitude by being part of the ten men who recorded an impressive 3-1 Merseyside derby win over Everton despite skipper Steven Gerrard being sent off after only 18 minutes and he missed only one of Liverpool’s final nine matches of the season after his return to the side at Birmingham.
Another disciplined and robust performance from the Malian against Chelsea at Old Trafford helped the Reds reach the FA Cup final as, for the second year running, Liverpool rained on the parade of a Chelsea side about to clinch the league title by knocking them out of a major cup semi-final.
And again, just like 12 months earlier, Benitez’s men were involved in one of the most dramatic finals of the modern era, the Reds’ - clearly fatigued after a marathon campaign which had begun the previous July - recovering from seemingly insurmountable deficits to draw 3-3 and take the trophy after a penalty shoot-out.
Steven Gerrard made most of the headlines after his assist and double strike including sensational 35-yard stoppage time equaliser which forced extra time but another lung-busting Sissoko performance was at the heart of Liverpool’s defiant performance with the Mirror praising “another monumental performance from the young African who showed his super-human reserves of energy in extra-time” and the Guardian saying “his industry was summed up by a snapped tackle late on as he lay on the turf with cramp in both legs”.
Benitez in the aftermath hailed his young African midfielder as the unsung hero of Liverpool’s seventh FA Cup triumph, saying, "Momo did for us what he's done all season.
"He worked very hard right until the end, and he was very important for us, not just on Saturday, but throughout the year.
"Some of my staff came to me at the end of the game and said they thought Momo would have been their man-of-the-match as well as Steven Gerrard.
"Maybe a lot of people don't recognise how important Momo is, but everyone at the club knows it."
Sissoko remembered the occasion fondly, admitting he was and remained in awe of Gerrard’s unique talent which for the second year in a row helped drag Liverpool out of the mire in a cup final through sheer force of will.
“That final was so good — and so was the party back in Liverpool,” Sissoko recalled.
“Stevie made the difference. Didi Hamann recently put a picture on his Instagram on the anniversary of us all with the trophy and some of us left comments. I said, ‘Lots of love’. We don’t all talk every day but being part of that team gives us all a bond that still exists today.
“I played with very big players in my career, like Alessandro Del Piero and Pavel Nedved, but Stevie G, to be honest, was the best because he could do everything. He could attack, defend, make goals and play all the positions. As a young player growing up alongside Stevie and Xabi, I learned so much. Stevie G was such a good teacher for me.”
Despite his awful eye injury, Sissoko racked up 45 appearances (37 of them from the start) in his debut Anfield season and hopes were high he would be a major part of concerted assault on the league title the following campaign.
A man-of-the-match performance against Chelsea in the Charity Shield further fostered such belief but a dislocated shoulder in a League Cup tie at Birmingham ruled him out for three months and he would only make 28 appearances in all competitions in 2006/07.
One of those was a herculean showing in Liverpool’s tense Champions League last 16 second leg showdown against holders Barcelona at Anfield when, after winning 2-1 in the Camp Nou first leg, Benitez’s men had to withstand heavy pressure from the Catalans and lost 1-0 on the night before progressing on away goals.
The arrival of Argentine defensive midfielder Javier Mascherano midway through the campaign added real competition for places in that area of the pitch and, despite starting both legs of the Barcelona tie and the second leg of the quarter-final against PSV Eindhoven, Sissoko did not even make the bench for the second leg of the semi final against old foes Chelsea or the final in Athens when AC Milan gained revenge for Istanbul two years.
The Malian admitted years later he was never quite the same player after the eye injury despite a number of outstanding performances with it which suggested otherwise.
“Whenever I was flying at Liverpool, something bad seemed to happen to me,” he told the Athletic.
“In my first season it was my eye and in my second season it was my shoulder.
“To be honest, I don’t think I was ever quite the same after hurting my eye. I still had good moments in my career but I was never 100 per cent after that.
"My vision was fine to play but psychologically I wasn’t so good. When you get a big injury like I had, it’s always in your mind. You know you escaped.
“I felt very blessed that I was able to come back and play at all.”
Despite his reduced involvement towards the end of his second season at Anfield, Sissoko turned down approach for Barcelona in the summer of 2007.
“I rejected Barcelona’s offer,” he told FourFourTwo.
“I received their proposal and we were in advanced talks, but I was happy at Liverpool. I didn’t want to go anywhere and decided to stay.”
But despite scoring his first and what would be only goal of his Liverpool career early in the following campaign in an away win at Sunderland, Sissoko was unable to wrestle his regular spot in the team back from Mascherano with young Brazilian Lucas Leiva now also having arrived to bolster Benitez’s midfield options and, after making an 87th and final Reds appearance at Chelsea in a League Cup quarter-final defeat, he was sold to Juventus in January 2008 for £8.2m.
In an open letter written to Liverpool fans as he departed, Sissoko made it very clear their support during such a difficult time in his life when he suffered his eye injury had left a deep impression on him.
“Even in the worst moments you have a strong sense that the fans are with you, supporting you as much as they can, never giving up, those fans make Liverpool even stronger,” he wrote.
“I really want to thank them for helping me to feel and to understand what football means in its purest form.
“I shall fight hard for my new shirt to the end, but when every match is finished, I know what I’ll do first – I shall ask about the results of Liverpool FC.”
He spent three-and-a-half years in Turin before moving back to France with PSG but continued injury problems were taking their toll and his career followed a rather nomadic path after that, taking in spells with Fiorentina, Levante, Shanghai Shenhua in China, Pune City in India, Ternana, Mitra Kukar in Indonesia, Atletico San Luis in Mexico, Kitchee in Hong Kong, before he retired in 2019 after a final stint back in France with Sochaux.
And the announcement of the end of his playing days and the tributes he received from Liverpool supporters prompted an emotional reaction from Sissoko which proved just how much the club still meant to him.
After confirming his retirement from football on French TV, RMC Sport in France asked a number of Liverpool supporters outside Anfield what they thought about their former midfielder and after a series of glowing tributes, Sissoko was deeply moved by what he heard.
"One of our cult heroes at Liverpool," says one supporter. "A great player and a great character.
"It's just that he was a consistent player, the fans absolutely loved him. He played with his heart on his sleeve.
"Momo, thank you for your time at Liverpool. You were a great player and the fans absolutely loved you."
Another added: "Unbelievable. Unbelievable. A great talent. Everybody loves him and I think he endeared himself to the fans very much and his passion was great on the field."
"Thanks for the memories Momo," a third said. "We all appreciated all the times you were on the pitch for us."
Asked how it feels to hear such praise well over a decade after his relatively short spell at the club, an emotional and tearful Sissoko said simply, "It is heartwarming."
