Sadio Mane will take to the pitch in Paris tomorrow night hoping to win the second Champions League medal of his career. It will be no easy task to take down Real Madrid, but should Liverpool manage it, it would be the player's seventh major honour since joining the club.
The Senegalese star has won every major trophy available to him since moving to Anfield back in 2016, while also leading his nation to AFCON glory earlier this year. He is certainly building quite the CV, although his career could have gone down a very different path when he made that move six years ago.
Mane was a relatively unheralded signing, with many feeling that Liverpool had overpaid by forking out £34million to sign him from Southampton. That fee has certainly turned out to be a major bargain, while it turns out that they were not the only Premier League club intent on signing him that summer.
Sadio Mane reveals he almost signed for Manchester United
Speaking to Jamie Carragher in an interview with The Telegraph, Sadio Mane revealed that he came very close to signing for Manchester United that summer, only for Jurgen Klopp to intervene at the 11th hour.
I have to say, I was really close to going to Manchester United (laughs). I had the contract there. I had it all agreed.
It was all ready, but instead I thought, ‘No, I want to go to Liverpool’. I was convinced to go with Klopp’s project. I still remember the first time I got the call from Klopp.
I was watching TV. It was an action movie - because I love movies - and he said, ‘Sadio, listen, I want to explain to you what happened at Dortmund’. That was when he thought of signing me for Dortmund and for some reason it didn’t work out. He tried to explain and I said, ‘it’s okay, it happened’. I forgave him.
Then he said, ‘now I want you at Liverpool’. And I said, ‘Okay, Dortmund is behind us, let’s focus on the future’.
He said, ‘We have a big project at Liverpool and I want you to be part of it’. Then he asked what position I wanted, because he could see at Southampton I played on the right side and I used to play on the left. I said I prefer left, and then he said, ‘but Coutinho is on the left!’
So I said, never mind, I will play on the right. I could see myself in all the positions.
Mane will certainly be glad that he turned his back on a potential move to Old Trafford. While he has been building his medal collection on Merseyside, Manchester United have not won a major trophy in five years.
There is also an argument to be made that he would be nowhere near the player he currently is had he ended up at United. While Jurgen Klopp has the ability to improve almost any player he coaches, very few players have enhanced their reputation after moving to the Red Devils over the last decade or so.
It's safe to say the move worked out well for him.
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