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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Sport
Tom Blow

Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane both transforming home villages in heroic acts of kindness

Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane have both pledged thousands of pounds to charity in recent years to transform their local villages.

Liverpool forward Salah, 30, was born in Nagrig - a village near the Egyptian city Basyoun. His club team-mate Mane, who is on the verge of completing a move to Bayern Munich, was born in the village of Bambali - located in the Sedhiou department of Senegal.

Mane, also 30, recently visited Bambali after spending almost £750,000 on new buildings - including a hospital, school, post office and petrol station. The hospital, which cost £455,000 to build, serves 34 nearby villages. Bambali has a population of around 2,000.

Mane, who has also pledged to give each family in Bambali a monthly €70 (£57) support package, returned home to play in a charity match alongside former Premier League stars Papiss Cisse and El-Hadji Diouf. The latter played for Liverpool between 2002 and 2004.

Salah, meanwhile, has helped build a hospital, school, youth centre and ambulance unit in Nagrig. The 85-cap Egypt international has also provided five acres of land for the waste treatment plant, allowing residents to have a safe source of clean water.

Reports last year suggested Salah had donated more than £400,000 to help his hometown. As quoted by the Liverpool ECHO in 2017, Maher Shetia - the mayor of Nagrig - praised the prolific forward for his philanthropic work.

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"Salah highlighted his small village on the international map," said Shetia. "He also built a charity and will build a school that costs millions. This is in addition to his donations to Basioun hospital with a complete ventilation room, incubations and an ambulance unit."

Salah even rejected the offer of a luxury villa from Mamdouh Abbas, the former president of Egyptian club Zamalek, after firing his country to the World Cup in Russia four years ago. That was Egypt's first World Cup finals since 1990. The talismanic footballer instead asked Abbas to make a charitable donation to his local village.

"Salah comes to the village when possible and walks among the people and takes photos with them so modestly," said Salah's cousin Abadah Saeed Ghali in 2017, as quoted by the ECHO. "All Egyptians, not only those of Nagrig or Gharbiya province, are proud of him."

A painting of Mohamed Salah in Nagrig (Mahmoud Khaled)

A teenager from Nagrig added in 2017: "We all adore Mohamed Salah. I met Salah here before and took a picture with him near my school. He is so modest and respectful and he socialises with us as an ordinary person despite his fame. For us, Salah is a role model and we like to imitate his skills when we play football."

Salah and Mane are two of the greatest footballers of their generation, helping Liverpool win the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, EFL Cup, Club World Cup and UEFA Super Cup in recent years. They've scored 276 goals between them for the Reds.

Mane's Senegal defeated Salah's Egypt on penalties to win the Africa Cup of Nations in February - the country's first major international honour. Senegal repeated the trick the following month to qualify for this year's World Cup in Qatar.

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