If you want to judge a player’s true quality, then look beyond even the stats which define careers these days, and listen to those who truly know. The players themselves.
When it comes to Sadio Mane, there were so many tributes it seemed as though he had passed away, not merely left for pastures new and, importantly, richer. Mane won the hearts and minds of the fans, but also, importantly, the appreciation of the gnarled ex- Liverpool pros.
Jamie Carragher described him as his favourite Reds player of this era, “a true legend”, and Robbie Fowler marked his departure to Bayern Munich on Twitter, with a crying emoji.
The Anfield great has always described Mane as the best of the Jurgen Klopp crop, and rated him higher than even Mo Salah. “For me, the most important of all of them in Jurgen’s team, no doubt,” Fowler said.
Ian Rush. Check. Steven Gerrard. Check. Graeme Souness. Check. When the Anfield legends line up to name you as an all time Liverpool great, then it defines you.
John Barnes too, tacitly suggested Mane is very much in conversation as Liverpool’s greatest ever left winger…and that is some praise indeed from the player widely regarded as the club’s best ever.
Barnes scored 108 goals in 10 years for Liverpool. Mane, with 120, topped it in six. But if we need stats to confirm a player’s greatness, then perhaps we should consider the Senegal international in the context of his role in one of the greatest forward lines in the club’s history.
Just try to digest this fact. You may need to read it twice, or more, to fully grasp it.
In the five years that Mo Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane played together, between them, they produced a combined 495 goal contributions.
Let me spell that out. ALMOST FIVE HUNDRED. 338 goals and 157 assists between them. That is 100 goal contributions a season from the front three alone.
It is impossible to compare that to most of Liverpool’s other great forward lines, because of different formations, or shorter periods of players combining. Daniel Sturridge, Luis Suarez and Raheem Sterling, for instance, really only played together for one season.
Kenny Dalglish and Rush were a formidable front two, as were Kevin Keegan and John Toshack. So in terms of longevity and sheer numbers, there is an argument to be made which suggests this front three is Liverpool’s best.
And scratch the surface a little deeper with Mane, and you’ll see he hits another metric which singles players out as all time greats. Big game contributions.
From the left wing, largely, to score 120 goals is remarkable, and 168 goal contributions is absolutely up there with the best, especially considering he got through far more tracking back defensive work than his fellow strikers.
But nobody in Liverpool’s entire history has scored more goals in Champions League knockout games than him, with 15. He has scored in the final, and won the penalty which was converted in another.
Two goals in the European Super Cup final too, and big goals against the biggest teams…seven against Manchester City (including the FA Cup semi final) and seven against Arsenal, including a wonder goal on his Liverpool debut, six against Chelsea.
Then there was his Player of the Tournament in this year’s Africa Cup of Nations, which he won for Senegal with his cool genius. He also reached 20 goals for Liverpool four times in the last five years, including a Premier League Golden Boot win shared with Salah in 2019.
Even more impressive though, is that since he went to Liverpool in 2016, he has scored the THIRD HIGHEST number of winning goals in the Premier League, behind only Salah and Harry Kane.
That metric is one of the most crucial in football, because it shows which players deliver most when the pressure is on. For evidence of that, Liverpool only needed to look at their run-in to the end of a quadruple-chasing season, when Salah stopped scoring, and Mane spectacularly filled the breach.
He would have capped it, too, with a winner (surely) in the Champions League final, but for the inspired (and unlikely) genius of Thibaut Courtois on the night.
It would have been a fitting finale to a player who undoubtedly ranks - in the words of Jurgen Klopp - as “one of Liverpool’s greatest ever players”, and undoubtedly alongside Barnes and Billy Liddell as the top three left wingers for the club, ever.
In which order to rank those three legends though, is left down to the reader…
