The African Kings Who Ruled Football

About two hours earlier, Mané had the golden opportunity of putting Senegal ahead during regulation time, but his penalty kick was saved by Egyptian goalkeeper Mohamed Abou Gabal. A second, more decisive chance to win Senegal its first AFCON title, and Salah knew that great players – like him, like Mané – flourish in these moments, and he was already bawling into his sweat-soaked jersey before Mané drilled his spot kick low and hard into the bottom left corner, past Abou Gabal’s outstretched right arm.

Ecstasy for one, misery for the other; that night was a culmination of the five years both Mané and Salah had spent as the premier African superstars in global football. Even though Mané would leave Liverpool later that year, effectively ending arguably the most potent wing-forward partnerships in English Premier League (EPL) history, a significant portion of their legacy is indelibly braided together.

The Rise of Two African Football Kings

During the summer transfer window of 2016, Mané moved from England’s south coast to Merseyside, after two seasons with Southampton where he scored 21 goals in 68 games. The £34 million that Liverpool paid for his services, the highest transfer amount for an African player at the time, was an investment in the Senegalese forward’s undeniable electricity.

While his goal output at Southampton didn’t fully capture his talismanic value to the club, simply watching him play on a fairly regular basis was enough to see that Mané took no days off from making the lives of opposing right backs miserable. He played with a blend of force and finesse, encapsulating what made Liverpool fearsome through the late 2010s and earlier this decade under former manager Jürgen Klopp.

Coming to Liverpool in Klopp’s second season in charge, Mané was brought in as a foundational piece to a club that had finished several years outside of the top four in the EPL. Mané scored 13 goals in 27 games, as Liverpool finished in the top four and qualified for the UEFA Champions League (UCL), sketching the outline for a potentially transcendent team.

A year after Mané’s move, Salah came to Merseyside from Italian club AS Roma for a then club record £36.5 million. This was his second time in England, after a short, largely uneventful stint with London-based Chelsea Football Club between 2014 and 2015. At Chelsea, a severe lack of playing time made it impossible for the Egyptian winger to stand out, however, a six month loan move to Fiorentina and two years at Roma, where he scored a combined 35 goals across 71 games, gave Liverpool strong incentive to bring him to Anfield.

Salah sizzled from the jump. Operating in the right side of a dynamic forward trio alongside Mané and Brazilian Roberto Firmino, in Klopp’s infamous, high octane gegenpressing system, Salah scored goals at will. His 32 league goals set the record for most goals scored in a 38-game season in the EPL. In his return to English football, Salah slinked through defences, his fluidity undergirded by a level of agility that was missing during his first stint.

While Liverpool routinely routed teams in multi-goal thrillers and lost only five games in the EPL during the 2017/18 season, they sometimes struggled defensively and let in goals that led to twelve draws and a fourth place league finish. However, it was in the UCL that their high-scoring tendencies paid dividends, with Salah, Mané and Firmino all scoring 10-plus goals in the tournament, on their way to reaching the final.

Triumph Driven by Competition

Midway through the first half of the 2018 UCL final against Spanish side Real Madrid, a shoulder injury forced Salah out of the match, a huge blow to Liverpool as they lost 3-1. A UCL title in their first year together would have been a true fairytale for Salah and Mané, but it’s the nature of football that titles have to be earned, and are sometimes preceded by heartbreak.

A year later, Liverpool were in the same position, playing in the Champions League final. This time around, Salah was in the game for all 90-plus minutes of the match and scored an early opening goal from the penalty spot, as his team beat fellow English side Tottenham Hotspurs 2-0. Salah and Mané again led the goals in the UCL title run, scoring five and four respectively.

Both forwards also shared the Golden Boot award, alongside Arsenal’s Gabonese striker Pierre Emerick Aubameyang, for highest number of goals in the 2018/19 EPL season. Their goalscoring prowess carried Liverpool within one point of winning the EPL title, as they lost only one league game all season, compared to eventual champions Manchester City’s four losses. Liverpool accrued 97 points that season, one of the highest points total ever in EPL history, but seven draws proved too many in the title race.

The following season, Liverpool were just as dominant, rattling off 26 wins and a single draw in their first 27 games. Some slippage to end the season didn’t matter, as the team hit 98 points and won the club’s first title in 30 years. Again, Salah and Mané led the goalscoring, with 19 and 18 league goals respectively.

In Liverpool’s fourth game of the season, Mané appeared to be seriously annoyed with Salah, after the Egyptian forward ignored him on a simple pass that would have led to a goal. It was the first outward sign that the pair weren’t particularly great friends. In his book, Si Senor: My Liverpool Years, Firmino hinted at a rivalry between his forward colleagues, born out of one-upmanship and competitor’s edge to be the best, rather than petty rancor.

“They were never best friends; each kept himself to himself,” Firmino wrote. “It was rare to see the two of them talking and I'm not sure if that had to do with the Egypt-Senegal rivalry in African competitions. I truly don't know. But they also never stopped talking, never severed ties. They always acted with the utmost professionalism.”

African Footballing Royalties

For all they achieved together as teammates at Liverpool, and with each player winning the CAF Men’s Play of the Year award Twice, a separating factor is Senegal’s AFCON title win in 2022. In the editions before, both Egypt and Senegal were incredibly close to winning, the former losing 2-1 to Cameroon at the 2017 final and Algeria beating the latter by a lone goal in 2019.

While Mané has etched himself as the leader of Senegal’s first AFCON-winning team, Salah is still dealing with the weight of legacy. Egypt has won the most AFCON titles with seven, but their last win came in 2010 as part of three straight titles led by the iconic and mercurial forward, Mohamed Aboutrika. It’s not uncommon to hear that Aboutrika is the greatest to play for the Egyptian Pharaohs while Salah is considered the best Egyptian player ever.

An AFCON title is no doubt high on the list of priorities, even as he led Liverpool to another EPL title this year and is in pole position to sweep the league awards this year. Meanwhile, Mané is Senegal’s record goalscorer and is outside the spotlight of European football after his big money move to the Saudi Pro League with Al Nassr.

Their greatness transcends football, cementing them as cultural icons and symbols of national pride. In Egypt, Salah’s image appears on merchandise and murals and schools and hospitals bear his name. Outside his footballing achievements, Mané is also deeply revered in Senegal for his consistent philanthropy in his hometown. Following Senegal’s historic AFCON victory, he was awarded the nation’s highest honour by the president.

Both players still have years of achievements to hit, but it’s undeniable that they’re the two definitive portraits of consistent excellence by premier African football stars over the last 15 years.