He is underrated, that seems to be a recurrent theme, which is a strange thing to say about a player who has finished second and fourth in the Ballon d’Or, who has won the Champions League, the Premier League, the German and Austrian Bundesligas. He is underrated, perhaps in the way that African talents are serially underrated by Eurocentric sensibilities, or perhaps because during his peak he shared an attack at Liverpool with another African prodigy, another generational talent—Mohamed Salah—who overshadowed him, stage-wise, stats-wise, and there’s only so much appreciation to go around. He, like Salah, grew up in a small village far from the proving grounds of professional football; like Salah, he is a devout Muslim who left home as a teenager. He doesn’t drink, he prays five times a day. He was beaten as a child. His father was an imam who died when he was seven. He was raised by his mother and uncle in Bambali, a place his uncle called the “fin fond” of Senegal, in which he has now rebuilt a mosque, and added a high school, a hospital, and a gas station—the trinity of development. He doesn’t like to talk about it.
He defended, at Liverpool, so Salah could shoot. He dropped so Salah could go. He ran back every time because how could you see Jordan Henderson dying of running and still running and still stay up? He got up hours before anyone else to run, to get faster, stronger. He understands sacrifice—this is why Jürgen Klopp brought him to Liverpool. He sacrificed the right wing when Salah arrived, he switched and learned to dominate the left wing, and when Salah slumped, he thrived in the centre as a false nine. He shared the Golden Boot with Salah and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in 2018-19 but didn’t have the problem that Mo had, of wanting to be the top scorer. He wanted, more than anything, to win the Africa Cup of Nations. He was winning in Europe but in Senegal he had no respect, his house was in danger of being burned down by patriots. He’d missed the decisive penalty in the quarters in 2017, he’d lost again in the final in 2019, but in 2021, at last and as captain, he led Senegal to their first AFCON championship, kicking the winning penalty—against Egypt—against Salah. He was finally free. His head let out the big bad pressure, he could sleep again. He was named player of the tournament, African footballer of the year.
His lines are astonishing in their force and straightness. His logic is that of the direct: inexorably goal-bound: every run, every pass, every turn, every shot is decisive. He holds the record for the fastest hat-trick (sub-three minutes) in the Premier League. He loves the ballistic strike into the top corner. He played football, as a child, with rocks, with grapefruits. He gets the ball and you feel something is going to happen. His first senior coach told him not to dribble too much and you want to go back and thank the coach and also throttle him. His work rate off the ball is preposterous, he presses and presses and presses. He is explosive on the ball, his back-heel a thing of joy—an evolution of the famous Papa Thiaw pass that led to Senegal’s golden goal at the 2002 World Cup—see it stomped into the Watford goal, see it executed mid-air, redirecting play, or inverting the field to a new angle of attack, as in the lead-up to the winning goal in the AFCON final earlier this year.
And now, after this final, Sadio Mané has become a living legend. In stoppage time, the scores level at 0-0, the referee awarded host nation Morocco a dodgy penalty and Papa Thiaw, now the Senegalese manager, protested by ordering all his players off the pitch. Mané, alone, stood his ground and stayed on the field—against coach’s orders, against corrupt officiating, amidst riot police and pandemonium. Then he talked his team back onto the field, where they went on to win Senegal’s second AFCON title. He was, for the third time, named the best player of the tournament.
Except, two months later, the Confederation of African Football declared the walk-off a forfeiture. They stripped the championship from Senegal and gave it to Morocco; stripped the best player award from him and gave it to Morocco’s Brahim Díaz. Once again, he found himself overshadowed by a lighter-skinned African player from a part of Africa that considers itself more Arab than African, closer to the Mediterranean than the Saharan.
He put out a statement: “What happened has gone too far.”
Appeals have been lodged. Both trophies are reportedly under guard at a military base.
He is humble, he is selfless, he will sacrifice again and again, but he will not be disrespected. He is, at thirty-four, an aging lion, in the twilight of his career. His body may finally be falling behind his will. But he is a big game player, and big games come down to small moments, and Sadio Mané has shown, as much as anyone at this year’s World Cup, that he knows how to meet a moment.