Liverpool forward Sadio Mane has made the bizarre admission that he didn’t know players get individual medals for winning the Premier League, rather than just the chance to lift the trophy.
Liverpool hold a record 22-point lead over second place Manchester City and will mathematically secure a first league title in 30 years within a matter of weeks if they continue their current form.
Mane has won three trophies with Liverpool in the last 12 months alone in the shape of the Champions League, UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup, all three of which came with individual medals for all the players.
The 27-year-old also previously won a league title in Austria with former club Red Bull Salzburg, yet learning that Premier League winner’s medals are a thing still took him by surprise.
“I heard yesterday that if we win the league, we will have a medal. I never knew that happened, but I don’t care about medals,” Mane told BBC World Service.
For Mane, who is reigning CAF African Footballer of the Year and is on course to reach 20 goals for the third consecutive season, just becoming a professional player was a battle because his family didn’t believe in the path he wanted to pursue.
“If you see where I came from in a very small village far from the [Senegalese] capital in Dakar. It was really tough, but it’s part of life and you have to dream and keep going every single day,” he said.
Self belief and hard work are two huge pillars of his success, and they were something the player needed as his mother and uncle both ‘hate football’ and considered it a ‘waste of time’.
“They never wanted me to play football so I had to go school and do something else, but I am successful so I have proved them wrong,” Mane explained.
This isn’t the first time that the former Southampton star has spoken about his family’s dim view of his dreams of wanting to become a footballer.
He previously said in 2018: “They weren’t sure about it because I was a long way from the capital and almost nobody from there had succeeded. They were against the idea, and they never believed it, right up until the day when I signed my first professional contract.”
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Source : 90min