Liverpool has agreed to sell Sadio Mane to Bayern Munich for a deal worth up to £35.1m.
The deal eclipses what Liverpool paid for Mane – £31m plus £2.5m in add-ons.
Bayern will pay an initial £27.5m with a further £5m based on appearance. The Bundesliga club will pay another £2.5m based on individual and team achievements.
The 30-year-old has been core to the club’s success over the past six seasons so will depart with their blessing and gratitude.
Liverpool has been conscious of needing to evolve their squad without sentiment as a driving factor and has efficiently recalibrated their attack with the recruitment of Diogo Jota, Luis Diaz, and Darwin Nunez.
Bayern has been confident of landing the Senegal international having received a verbal commitment from him last month. They believed it enabled them to pull off a cut-price deal, especially considering the Nunez development.
The Bundesliga giants also pointed to their ‘soft’ negotiations with Liverpool for Thiago Alcantara, selling the midfielder for an initial £20m with a potential £5m in add-ons.
News of Mane’s impending move came as the Senegal star took part in a parade around his country and returned to play football on a muddy surface in his home town Bambaly.
Mane’s future had, until the final weeks of the season, been something of a sideshow to that of Mo Salah – even though he too was entering the final year of his contract at Anfield.
It is a familiar dynamic. Mane, although cherished by those associated with Liverpool, tends to receive only a fraction of the attention and acclaim afforded to his teammate. It has been that way ever since the Egyptian’s arrival, a year after his, in 2017.
He departs, however, having played a similarly crucial role in the club’s transformation during Jurgen Klopp’s tenure, leaving an indelible mark on Liverpool and indeed on the Premier League as a whole.
His arrival from Southampton in 2016 signalled the start of the glorious chapter that followed. Mane was, after all, Klopp’s first major signing. Fast, ferociously aggressive and ruthlessly efficient, he came to embody Klopp’s Liverpool perhaps better than anyone else.
Together with Salah, he helped redefine expectations of wide forwards, reaching double figures for goals in six consecutive seasons and scoring at least 20 in four of them. His overall total of 120 puts him 14th in Liverpool’s all-time scoring charts.
The numbers cement his Liverpool legacy while the consistency of his output, as well as the pivotal role he played in the club’s first title triumph in 30 years in 2020, ensures Premier League greatness too.
