Do not let his initials fool you: Sadio Mané is not necessarily into the rough stuff. But he has had to beef up since arriving in England from Red Bull Salzburg last summer, hitting the gym to condition his body to endure the Premier League, where not even Eden Hazard is persecuted as often as Mané.
José Mourinho complains incessantly, and justifiably, about the way Hazard is brutalised by opponents and the recently crowned the Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year has been the victim of more fouls than anyone else in the Premier League this season. Mané, however, who has not played as much as Hazard, has been wronged more frequently than anyone, chopped down on average every 27.6 minutes, compared to Hazard’s rate of 29.3. Mourinho is probably aware of that, since his team contributed so liberally to the hack rate, with three Chelsea players booked for fouls on Mané as the Senegalese winger tore into the league leaders during March’s 1-1 draw at St Mary’s, Dusan Tadic scoring from the spot for the hosts after Mané was felled by Nemanja Matic.
Mostly Mané has responded the right way – by working to develop the strength that will allow his skills to survive in the Premier League jungle – but against Tottenham Hotspur last weekend he veered towards a reaction that he could do without repeating, hitting the deck more often than a card dealer who hates her job. Some of Mané’s falls looked so unconvincing that even Southampton fans cringed. It was a pity to see, especially as the Senegalese’s mischief making was otherwise as admirable as usual, his rapid shuffling feet, jagged runs and cut passes regularly frazzling Spurs, and he had a role in both of his team’s goals. A firm word from Ronald Koeman should set him straight.
Mané has been admonished by his manager twice this season for other imperfections. He was dropped for the home match against Liverpool after arriving 25 minutes late for a team meeting and he was upbraided against Hull City for briefly ignoring the established penalty-taking order by taking the ball off James Ward-Prowse before giving it back when the manager intervened. Mané is no miscreant but nor is he above making mistakes and he is fortunate to have a manager who helps correct them quickly.
The penalty kerfuffle with Ward-Prowse was interesting. Speaking about it afterwards, Koeman seemed more angry with Ward-Prowse for handing over the ball than with Mané for demanding it. It was as if Ward-Prowse’s abdication was an affront to the very concept of set-piece expertise and, as such, a slur that a man with Koeman’s credentials could not tolerate. “That didn’t happen in my time because I was the taker and nobody else,” said Koeman. “[Ward-Prowse] knows he is the No1 and even a young player has to show his confidence and his responsibility. It’s a good lesson for Prowsey.”
In a way, that is what Mané was doing – showing his confidence and responsibility. This is a 23-year-old who generally carries the weight of expectancy well, despite knowing since he was a teenager that most of the people he cares about are counting on him to achieve great things. In Senegal he is tipped for superstardom. The country’s former manager Claude Le Roy says Mané is a future winner of the Ballon d’Or; the former Senegal and Newcastle defender Habib Beye lauds him as his country’s “little diamond”. Southampton paid nearly £12m for him.
“I am very conscious of how much people are expecting from me and that is my motivation to work harder every day to go as far as I can,” says the player, who has already come very far. When he was growing up in Sédhiou, a remote town in Senegal’s Casamance region nearly 500 miles south of the capital city, Dakar, becoming a professional footballer seemed a pipe dream – but it was a dream he was determined to pursue.
“Football is not as developed in Casamance, so when I was 16 I sat down and talked with my parents and they agreed to let me go live with my uncle in Mbour [a small coastal resort just south of Dakar],” says Mané. “I joined a small team there and that’s how I got called for trials at the Centre.”
The Centre is Génération Foot, one of a multitude of academies that has sprouted in Senegal in the past decade or so. Founded by the Senegalese former professional Mady Touré, it is also one of the most successful, with graduates including West Ham’s Diafra Sakho and Newcastle’s Papiss Cissé.
Both of those players, like Mané, moved from the academy to the Ligue 1 club FC Metz, for whom Touré used to work as a scout. When they eventually arrived in the Premier League, Sakho and Cissé made sensational early impacts: Cissé struck 13 goals in 14 matches after joining Newcastle in 2012 and Sakho equalled a long-standing record by scoring in each of his first six league starts after signing for West Ham last summer.
Mané did not announce his arrival quite so spectacularly. In his early performances, in particular, he often looked raw. However, during the festive period, when new arrivals to the Premier League traditionally start to fade, he began to play with real class and menace, cutting through defences and scoring in three matches in a row, against Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Arsenal. Then came injury, a trip to the Africa Cup of Nations and, upon his return, another decisive performance and another winning goal, this time against QPR. Six goals from 20 starts is a fine yield for a player who has mostly been deployed out wide and creates as many as he scores.
Mané still occasionally frustrates by making wayward passes or taking wild shots or, it seems, tumbling with irksome ease but he has the ability and attitude to ensure that, ultimately, his talent will eclipse anything else. His start may not have been quite as explosive as those of Sakho and Cissé but he has the talent to burn longer and brighter than any of his compatriots.
John Terry voted for him to be in the Premier League team of this season, presumably in recognition of how the Senegalese twice made Chelsea players resort to desperate measures to stop him. In future seasons Mané could come close to topping the polls.
