A poor past is the motivation for Liverpool striker Sadio Mane to rise in football, and return to his hometown of Senegal with a heart of charity.

The newly released documentary Made in Senegal reveals many hidden corners of Mane’s difficult childhood.

From a boy who uses bitter grapefruit as a ball to one of the best wing strikers on the planet is a long journey. The first shock came when Mane was seven years old, when his father passed away due to illness. The striker born in 1992 said: “We were preparing to play football when a relative came and told us the bad news: Father had passed away. At first, I thought he was kidding me because I couldn’t understand this.” .

“Since I was little, my father always said he was very proud of me. He had a kind heart and his passing left a huge impact on me and the rest of the family. I used to tell myself: ‘Now I have to do my best to help my mother’. That is not an easy responsibility when you are so young.”

During his lifetime, Father Mane was an imam at a local Mosque. Mane’s family are devout Bambali people and wanted their son to complete his studies to become a teacher instead of pursuing a career in football. Meanwhile, football is Mane’s dream to change his life.

But it was not an easy decision, especially when no one around him supported him, not even his family. There were times when Mane thought he was wasting his time because success in football was only in his imagination. “But in my heart, I knew that it was the only way for me to succeed and help my family,” he recalls.

At that time, the only place to become a professional player was not in remote Bambali, but in the capital city of Dakar. Therefore, at the age of 15, Mane decided to leave home. From the night before, he hid his bag in the bushes in front of his house and then got up very early the next day and sneaked away so no one would see him. Only a close friend knew the plan. Mane walked a long way and borrowed money from another friend to buy a bus ticket to Dakar.

At the same time, back home, his family was frantically searching for him. After asking for information from a close friend, his parents called to take Mane home. But he remained determined, and was eventually accepted to try football at the end of the school year.

Mane returned to his hometown of Bambali to volunteer.

When the real opportunity came, Mane was one of the people who looked most lost among about 300 young players trying their luck. He was wearing pants that looked unrelated to football pants and a pair of tattered, patched-up shoes. But in a trial match at Generation Foot academy, Dakar, Mane shined, scoring four goals. Thanks to the guidance of academy founder Mady Toure, Mane is increasingly improving. In 2011, he was recruited by French club Metz and began his adventure in Europe.

After a shining summer at the 2012 Olympics and helping the Senegal youth team reach the quarterfinals, Mane went to Austria to play for Red Bull Salzburg. His advancement steps became more and more steady when he joined Southampton in 2014 and then Liverpool in 2016. Currently, Mane is one of the best players in the Premier League in particular and the world in general.

At Liverpool, Mane has reached new heights in his career . He created a dangerous trident in attack with Mohammed Salah and Roberto Firmino, helping the team reach the Champions League final two years in a row and win the championship once. In the 2018-19 Premier League season, Mane was joint top scorer with Aubameyang and Salah with 22 goals each. This impressive achievement helped Mane rank fourth in the European Golden Ball voting and fifth in FIFA’s 2019 “The Best” list.

By early 2020, Mane was honored with the “Best Player in Africa” ​​award. Until the ball stopped rolling due to the Covid-19 epidemic , Mane and his teammates were still alone on the road to their first Premier League championship. All of those achievements came under Klopp. But the German coach also had to admit that he had a bad impression when he first met his student born in 1992.

Klopp said in the documentary about Mane: “I still remember the first time I met Sadio in Dortmund. This young man sat around with his hat askew and his hair with blonde streaks. He looked like a rapper just starting out. career. I told myself: ‘I don’t have time for people like this’. At that time, my squad wasn’t that bad. I needed a player who could accept not being a starter from the start, a someone I can develop. I still believe I have a pretty good eye for people, but I was wrong in this case. I followed Sadio’s successful career at Salzburg and then Southampton.”

After directly witnessing Mane’s performance against Liverpool, Klopp was completely convinced. Liverpool led Southampton 2-0 at halftime, before Mane came on and scored twice to reverse the situation. In the summer of 2016, Mane arrived at Anfield for a fee of 34 million pounds.

Klopp once missed the opportunity to recruit Mane at Dortmund, but promptly corrected his mistake when he welcomed him to Liverpool in 2016.

Contrary to the rapper-style playboy appearance described by Klopp, in real life Mane does not live the lifestyle of a soccer millionaire . In 2018, he went to the Liverpool Mosque a few hours after the win over Leicester to help clean the toilets. Sadio proactively asked the staff at the Cathedral not to send videos of him out, because he did not want to create an image and was not someone who wanted to please the fans. Sadio has a Bentley, but usually gets there in a normal car.

AS newspaper quoted Sadio Mane in an interview with an African newspaper: “Why do I need 10 Ferrari cars, 20 diamond watches or two planes? What can those things do for me and so this world? I went through a difficult time with a flat stomach, playing football barefoot and lacking enough sugar. But with what I have today thanks to football, I can help my community.”

Mane’s hometown is where the World Bank estimates that up to 70% of households live in poverty. His father passed away because there was no hospital for treatment, while his sister also had to be born at home. That’s why Mane recently built a hospital in his hometown, because he “wanted to give people hope”. A year earlier, Mane also contributed money to build a school in the land where he grew up. When Covid-19 broke out globally, Mane quickly sent £40,000 to the Senegal government to support anti-epidemic work.

As a person who does not want to make a fuss about his volunteer activities, Mane still accepted to participate in the documentary Made in Senegal to let more people know about his homeland. He told the Telegraph : “Football is my main job, but sometimes things don’t just revolve around the ball. I think we are role models and helping others is very important. I really want to fans get to see the village where I grew up and realize what happens if you truly believe in yourself.”

The film recorded scenes of Mane sharing with teenagers in front of the newly built school. The Senegal striker said in the film: “Education is the key. You should also be in good health before going to work, so let’s complete the hospital together.”

He added: “If there had been a better school when I was a kid, maybe I would have learned more. Nowadays, every boy wants to play soccer and become a player like me rather than go to school. But I always remind them that they need to go to school and be equipped with enough knowledge. Of course they can play football, but studying will help you be more successful in your field. When I look at my compatriots, I tell myself : ‘I need to work harder for them'”.

Sadio Mane may not have won the Golden Ball, but in the eyes of the Senegalese people, he has a heart of Gold.