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It's easy to forget that Mamadou Sakho is only 24 years old. Part of that is the amount of experience he's accumulated, with seven years of first-team football under his belt, including the honor of being named PSG's youngest-ever captain at age 17. Seven years of doing anything consistently other than goofing off by the age of 24 is an impressive achievement, and that's ignoring the very real possibility that he's probably got seven more years ahead of him.
Sakho's demeanor also contributes to the perception that he's a fair bit more mature than his age would indicate; no doubt the seven years of experience have helped, but the man also comes across wonderfully in interviews (or at least Liverpool's interpreter does), and his young career on Merseyside has included impressive performances both on and off the pitch.
It all contributes to the notion that he's the type of player who could one day lead Liverpool out as captain, and his words ahead of the visit to Crystal Palace fall in line with the tone he's struck since day one:
"Everything is going well, we are fine. Everything is cool. We have to remain calm and relaxed. Like I said, everything is going well, even though we lost that game. But that defeat, it's in the past now, it's behind us. We now have to focus on what's ahead of us, meaning the next two games. And we mustn't change anything, we should remain true to ourselves and play our own game and then try and win those two matches so we can grab those six points."
"I think we have shown great strength of character this season. It's all happened in a quite natural way because the team gets on really well together, we have a fantastic manager, exceptional backroom staff and magnificent supporters. With this big family, Liverpool can only keep moving forward and we can only keep growing, it's as simple as that."
The lone area of concern regarding Mamadou Sakho is that his presence in the squad has created a one or the other scenario with Daniel Agger. Two left-footers couldn't even partner together in central defense because because because, and we're yet to see the two on the pitch at the same time for any meaningful amount of minutes other than late in matches. No, the Southampton match at Anfield didn't happen.
That problem might never be resolved, and while that would still be unpleasant, it seems that we're at least guaranteed to get plenty of Sakho over the next few years, and all signs in his debut season point to that being a very good thing.
