Editor’s Column: Liverpool will never be the same without Sadio Mane

Liverpool will never be the same without Sadio Mane. We might be different, we might even be better at some point if Darwin Nunez fulfils his promise and price-tag, but we’ll never be the same.

Six years is the same amount of time Simon Mignolet spent at Liverpool. Taiwo Awoniyi was a Liverpool player for six years, too, before we sold him to Union Berlin last summer. He’s going to Premier League new-boys Nottingham Forest this window, for what it’s worth…

But the point is, six years isn’t usually enough time for a footballer to forge a genuinely legendary career. Mane though did it all for Liverpool between 2016 and 2022. He won the Champions League, the Premier League, the Club World Cup, the FA Cup and the League Cup. Individually, he won a Golden Boot and was named in the Premier League Team of the Season on four occasions and came 4th in the Ballon d’Or in 2019. That year, in which we won the Premier League, Mane was our best player.

As a man, Sadio’s character is rated just as highly as his football ability. Jurgen Klopp once turned him down when manager of Borussia Dortmund. After seeing a young lad dressed like a rapper, Klopp said he couldn’t take him seriously, but he has admitted his mistake and corrected it by purchasing the Senegalese from Southampton.

Opposition fans laughed and many Liverpool ones were disappointed to be signing Mane instead of Mario Gotze, at the time. It’s funny how rhetoric and hyperbole can take over during the summer, when supporters whip themselves into a frenzy about the transfer market and forget about the whole football bit that follows. Mane though announced himself on debut with that famous stunner versus Arsenal and never looked back.

In his debut season, Mane played on the right, before moving to the left upon the introduction of Mo Salah a year later. For a few months, Klopp fielded Coutinho, Mane, Salah and Roberto Firmino in the same side, to devastating attacking results, before the former got his exit to Barcelona and perhaps the best Premier League front-three of all-time was born.

Salah, Mane and Firmino have wowed. The video below is 10 minutes long and only shows wonderful goals in which the trio link up. The fact there is that amount of footage proves the consistency of their brilliance. Watch it – it’s incredible.

Wow. Watch the whole 10 minutes. It’s crazy. https://t.co/yuR3IK72l2

— Empire of the Kop (@empireofthekop) June 18, 2022

Liverpool’s new-look front-three will likely include Luis Diaz on the left, Salah on the right and Darwin Nunez centrally, although with Salah looking increasingly likely to run down his contract and depart next season, this trio will need to be enforced in 2023.

Manchester United fans will claim Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez are the best front-three in PL history, but the fact is they played together for less time, scoring fewer goals and registering fewer assists for each other. They won two titles, but were much less dominant week by week as they registered less points than Liverpool have done on three occasions under Klopp (99, 97 and 92).

Mo, Sadio and Bobby will go down as the best front-three in Premier League history. Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened!

— Empire of the Kop (@empireofthekop) June 18, 2022

In the end, we should be glad the deal to Bayern Munich has been completed fairly early in the summer and we won’t have to deal with the pain of an enduring transfer saga.

Mane has behaved impeccably in his six years, and the only slight blotch on his copybook could be the odd comments made in the run-up to his exit.

But we can forgive them those pretty easily. If anything, they just displayed a naivety to how highly we regard him as a fanbase.

Coutinho, Emre Can and Gini Wijnaldum regretted leaving Liverpool. It got worse for them elsewhere, but Mane is going to light up Germany.

We’re happy another set of supporters will see his greatness and if Bayern ever draw Liverpool in the Champions League, Mane will get an incredible reception upon his return. That says a lot.