Sadio Mane: ‘Best player in the world this year’ is the pride of Liverpool and Salzburg

Sadio Mane is a graduate of Salzburg’s programme for identifying young talent and his rise to become a Ballon d'Or contender is a source of pride at the Austrian club almost as much as Anfield

Both Liverpool and Salzburg have reason to be thankful and proud of Sadio Mane (Getty)

Long after the final whistle, Sadio Mane was the last Liverpool player on the pitch. There he smiled and embraced Christoph Freund, Red Bull Salzburg’s technical director whose time at the club began in 2003 when they were plain old Austria Salzburg, and who has played such an instrumental part in a revolution that his transformed them into one of the most respected scouting set-ups in Europe, of which Mane is their greatest alumnus.

Mane has come to be a symbol of everything that is good about this modern Liverpool team, a combination of endeavour and talent that has carried them to the pinnacle of European football, but his rise has also come to symbolise Salzburg’s success, even if the irony of Tuesday night’s Champions League game was that his talent was the catalyst for Liverpool to knock Salzburg out of the competition.

For a long time the result was far from certain. It felt like one of those nights when you might see something inexplicable unfold, something to go against all conventionally held logic, to pull at the Champions League’s predictable seams. Nights like these don’t come along very often in Salzburg. Teams like Liverpool rarely visit. The Red Bull Arena sold out its 30,000 capacity and could have sold 60,000 more. For a couple of days the city was gripped by a football match and all the promise it held.

The feeling of something amiss began long before Mohamed Salah discovered more and more inventive ways of missing the target, before the stadium fizzled with anticipation at Salzburg’s fast start, before the game had even begun. At the previous night’s press conference Jurgen Klopp had seemed agitated by questions digging at topics he’d long buried, and frustrated by the translator beside him missing his lines. By contrast his opposite number Jesse Marsch seemed upbeat, like a man with nothing to lose and everything to gain.

But just as gradually as the sense of something stirring crept up, it was undone in an instant. Out of the chaos stepped Mane, a man whose base-level serenity should come with a warning, such is its knack of lulling defenders into a state of impotent calm. His feet were too fast for centre-back Jerome Onguene, his legs too quick for goalkeeper Cican Stankovic, who realised that he shouldn’t have rushed out of goal only once he’d been drawn past the point of no return. Mane chipped a pass to Naby Keita who nodded into the empty net to round off a Liverpool goal made in Salzburg.

After a first half when it wasn’t always easy to tell who were the champions of Austria and who were the champions of Europe, Mane was the difference. This is nothing new, of course: Mane has been brilliant for many months now, it’s just that the games when he isn’t the best player on the pitch are fewer and further between than ever. He has 13 goals and eight assists in 22 games this season, but just as important is his growing presence, the way he lurks in the shadows of a game carrying an uncontainable threat that could explode at any moment.

Perhaps that presence has been enhanced a little by the recent Ballon d’Or, where he finished fourth and where he won Lionel Messi’s top vote. Mane has long seemed like a world-class talent but this was confirmation by the most prestigious individual award in football that he is on the same plane as the very best on the planet, and with it his on-field demeanour carried even more conviction.

Freund admits that he never envisaged Mane climbing this high when he signed from FC Metz as a callow 20-year-old, having scored two goals in 23 games in France. The director said this week that it was Mane’s movement and intelligent running off the ball which caught the eye back in 2012, which has turned him into the “best player in the world this year” according to Freund, and it is not a coincidence that Salzburg’s current leading goalscorer, Erling Haaland, shares that highly valued trait.

After Mane’s intervention the tension quickly dissipated. Salah scored a moment later with the most difficult chance of his night, and afterwards Klopp seemed content. In the press room he apologised to the translator he had chastised the day before and this time fielded questions with warmth, praising Salzburg’s dogged approach. The question that had most frustrated him 24 hours earlier was about Mane, and whether he regretted turning down the chance to sign the forward for Borussia Dortmund several years ago. It is nights like this when Mane proves that judgement was wildly flawed, and when he shows the fruition of Salzburg’s exhaustive search for gold.