Sadio Mane leaves Liverpool a club legend.
A record of 120 goals in 269 appearances in all competitions and a medal haul that has included the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup, FIFA Club World Cup and UEFA Super Cup ensures that the 30-year-old Senegalese has done enough to be placed alongside the very best of those to have represented the club.
All good things come to an end, however, and while the joy at Liverpool landing the next generation in Darwin Nunez for a fee that could rise to as much as £85m, the week ended on sad note as Mane, such an important part of what Jurgen Klopp has created at Liverpool, departed the club and headed to the Bundesliga to sign with Bayern Munich in a £35m deal.
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For Liverpool, while the arguments can undoubtedly be made as to whether losing such a player makes competitive sense in the shorter term, taking a longer-term view on what happens on and off the field means that it was probably a deal that was too good to turn down.
Player trading has always been the Fenway Sports Group way. The outlay on new signings has historically been aided in no small part by the sale of players after their value had risen, with Philippe Coutinho and his £142m move to Barcelona that facilitated the transformational deals for Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk the most obvious example of that.
The move for Nunez, while something that the club can finance without too many pieces having to be moved around given that the fee will be amortised over the life of his six-year contract, is one that the club will want to try and chip away some of the cost of from the disposal of player registrations and transfer fees raised. Mane was a valuable asset to Liverpool whose performance levels had not dropped off, but for a player who was heading into the final year of his contract and who was now in his 30s, a decision had to be made.
Mane arrived at Liverpool back in 2016 from Southampton for a £34m fee. In the six years since the Reds have brought the very best out of him and he has proven to be one of Klopp's most key assets. But football doesn't stand still and the Reds have to think about what happens in two, three or four years time, not just about what happens next season. To get a £1m profit on a player who was signed six years ago and now in their 30s is strong business, whichever way you look at it.
The consideration had to be made around wages, too. A new deal for Mane would have been costly, with the Senegalese likely to want to be not far off what Mohamed Salah would be looking for to renegotiate. Liverpool are still having issues in getting Salah to commit, still trying to find ways to fit him into a pay structure that has been carefully built so as to ensure greater cost certainty and reduce the risk of wage liabilities spiralling out of control, with the concern being that bending a great deal for Salah means that renegotiations with existing players become far more costly, as does negotiating with prospective new players.
Various reports have suggested differing salaries for Mane in Germany. At Liverpool the forward was said to be earning around the £100,000 mark, with his move to Bayern reported by some to have doubled, even trebled in some cases. The Mirror claimed that Mane would earn around £240,000 per week at Bayern, a figure that would have placed him as the highest earning player at Liverpool ahead of any Salah renewal. It is also a figure £100,000 per week more than what Nunez is said to be commanding to join the club, meaning that the wage liabilities are kept down and Liverpool maintain their control.
Liverpool had an ageing squad in various positions. Salah, Mane, Roberto Firmino, Van Dijk and Thiago Alcantara, all key men in their positions, are in their 30s and the Reds were not willing to go big on two extensions for players into their mid-30s given the greater risks involved due to the chance of a decline in form and output, although that is not a given.
The Mane deal works for the Reds financially, although there is the argument that such an important player leaving and an untried young Premier League player arriving creates more risk. But in trying to plan for the future, such risks are unavoidable and there has to be a replacement of key parts bit by bit. This summer it was Mane who was seen as a player who was expendable, even though the club would rather have kept hold of him on lesser terms.
Spending big on players over 30 is pretty rare at top level European football, even rarer when they have just 12 months left on their deal. The willingness to spend now is born from a desire from clubs to avoid a fight for the player when he becomes a free agent, something that can considerably bump up wages given player agents understanding that the buying clubs now only have to consider wages and commission for the agent's services. Bayern will have looked at that and decided that in acquiring a world class player now and paying above the market rate for a 30-year-old with a year left they are better placed than taking a gamble next summer on a player one year older and even more expensive in terms of wages.
Cristiano Ronaldo moved for around £100m from Real Madrid to Juventus well into his 30s, while Gabriel Batistuta moved for £31m as a 30 year old in 1999 from Fiorentina to Roma. Chris Wood's £25m move from Burnley to Newcastle United in January was the third highest fee paid for a forward in his 30s, although the Magpies' new-found wealth and willingness to spend to get themselves away from trouble was a major factor in the inflated price, allied with them buying off a relegation rival.
For a forward in his 30s, only Ronaldo eclipses the money that Bayern have paid for his services. It represents a good deal for Liverpool, albeit short of the £42m that they had been seeking. For Mane it is also a good deal, he gets the kind of money that he had been seeking and the chance at another adventure that he had previously intimated he would be interested in. Losing his dynamism is something that is hard to sugar coat, but in playing the longer game, the value of the deal for a player in the circumstances which Mane was in means that it would have been tough to turn down.
Young players who have one year left can still hold their value, as the likes of Kylian Mbappe demonstrated when Real Madrid bid £172m last year. But for players in their 30s, despite world class CVs and continued first team importance, see their value decline rapidly, and as FSG experienced with their star player Mookie Betts at the Boston Red Sox, realising the financial value is sometimes the only sensible course of action when considering what is best for the business side of things and the longer term.
