Hailing from a remote Senegalese village called Bambali, a seven hour road journey (including border crossings in and out of The Gambia) from the capital Dakar, Sadio Mané came from an impoverished background partially caused by the premature death of his father, an imam when he was seven. As a youngster he worked on the family farm after school but still found time to kick a grapefruit by way of a football around the dusty lanes around the small hut he lived in. Friends remember him being the best player around and aged 15, against the wishes of his mother he took himself off on that tortuous journey to an academy in Dakar.

Two months later members of his family brought him back home reasoning that the youngster had set his sights too high, but six months later he was back in the capital, this time with the blessing of the family. The Generation Foot academy had a partnership with Metz which is how Mané then found himself settled in northern France having signed a five year contract after they were relegated to the third tier. Not long after helping Senegal to the quarter finals of the 2012 World Cup he learned that RB Salzburg and Metz had agreed a fee of 4m euros for him and very reluctantly he took his leave of his adopted home. The next two years were a steep learning curve, for the twenty-year old but when his new club won the Austrian Bundesliga in his second year, Ronald Koeman, the new Saints manager sanctioned a £12m offer which was accepted.

Sadio took a while to settle at St Mary’s and in February 2015 was dropped after reporting to St Mary’s late for a game against Liverpool but, in the May, made headlines with the fastest hat-trick ever scored in the Premier League. His three goals against Aston Villa was timed at 2minutes 56 seconds.

In January 2016 he was dropped again, this time because of turning up late for a pre-match meeting at Norwich, but a couple of months later scored a brace as Southampton came from behind to beat Jorgen Klopp’s Liverpool in a pulsating match made more memorable when Ronald Koeman sprinted down the touchline as Mané’s winner found the net (see scrapbook section).

He then went on a mini scoring spree scoring 5 goals in 5 matches including a hat-trick against Manchester City. Inevitably Klopp, who had been tempted to sign Mané for Dortmund when he was still at at Salzburg, was now fully convinced and it took £34m for Southampton to pave the way to becoming yet another who took a well-worn path to Merseyside. He became a huge success at Anfield and dove-tailing particularly neatly alongside Mo Salah ensured the 2019 European Cup returned to Anfield. To round it all off at the end of that year he was voted African Player–of-the-Year. He has never forgotten his roots however and has financed the building of a hospital back in Bambali spurred on by the belief that had his village had a hospital back when his father had been so ill, the man he worshiped as a young boy may have lived long enough to see to see his son become one of the finest players in the modern game.