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Professional athletes can seem a mercurial lot, at times happy to follow the trail leading to the biggest payday, even if that leaves them stuck playing in the Russian winter for fans who aren't always best thrilled to have them around. The more high minded follow the glitter of trophies and awards, achievements to look back on once their playing days are over. Looking past the stars, moving often becomes necessary simply to stay in the game.
Any way one comes at it, it's a job that, more than most, doesn't often lend itself to staying put and settling down. A few rare exceptions will always exist, though, and Liverpool's biggest summer signing for a long while thought he would be one of those few players who could spend their entire careers at a single club. In the end it wasn't to be, but having made the move from his boyhood club, Mamadou Sakho insists he wouldn't have it any other way.
"I wouldn't have changed my choice for anything in the world," said Sakho. "My decision to come to Liverpool has been fantastic for me. I haven't been here very long at all but I've settled in well. It was always going to be hard because I've only ever known one club and been a one-club person before coming here, so that makes things a bit more difficult, but I've been prepared to go and ask advice from everyone—my team-mates, coaches, and the manager. I've asked them a lot about the game here, my family has settled in, it's going well."
Liverpool fans will be thrilled to hear he's settled into his new home, and also perhaps be hoping that, having made his first switch, Sakho doesn't decide that it needs to quickly be followed by another with the player discovering a latent streak of wanderlust. They'll also be hoping to see a bit more of him on the pitch in the coming weeks after not featuring against Everton over the weekend when manager Brendan Rodgers decided to stick with Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger, the club's most experienced pairing.
With Sakho seen as Liverpool's cornerstone in defence for the foreseeable future, though, it seems inevitable Rodgers will find a way to work him in more often than not in what is a very crowded December that includes seven league matches. Beyond December, Sakho's career appears to hold nothing but potential and upside in the short and medium term. However, after early suggestions the player might have at least a bit of the longer term plotted out already, he insisted that's still as much of a mystery as all the rest.
"I wasn't referring to the club," he added when asked about criticism he had received for suggesting his story with Paris wasn't over shortly after arriving at Anfield, though for most Liverpool fans it had never been an issue, with many assuming Sakho saw himself heading back to France to take on a more limited role at his boyhood club in the eventual twilight of his career. "I was saying that because I'm in the national team I would always have a chance to be back in Paris and what happened the other night showed I was right."
Whatever he meant, given a more prominent role for Liverpool after PSG's attempts to emulate Manchester City left him on the fringes there, and after his recent performance for the national team, it's a safe bet he'll be heading back to play football a fair bit in the coming years. As for last week's international match, after initially only being credited for the first goal in a victory over Ukraine that ensured Les Blues will spend next summer in Brazil, Sakho has now been given a second marker that was originally counted an own goal for Oleg Gusev.