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A football season is long for any side and a successful one requires heroes to pop up along the way. There are a maximum of twelve games remaining in Liverpool’s 2018-19 campaign: seven Premier League fixtures interspersed with another five matches the Reds must play in order to lift their sixth Champions League trophy.
Sitting precariously at the top of the domestic table and poised to make another deep run in Europe’s top competition, Reds fans will know that getting to this point required numerous members of the squad to step up and be counted.
Be it talisman Mohamed Salah’s match-winning magic, Divock Origi’s ridiculous winner against Everton, Daniel Sturridge rolling back the clock early in the season to scrap valuable points, Alisson’s Champions League campaign-saving stop against Napoli, Virgil Van Dijk’s overall brilliance and even just James Milner stepping in at right back and doing a job, each step of Liverpool’s potentially momentous season has seen heroes pop up time and again.
Currently, the man carrying the water for Jürgen Klopp’s side is the mercurial Sadio Mané. Simply put, the Liverpool no. 10 is on fire right now, with every one of his 11 goals in his past 11 games for the club seemingly dragging his side to the results required to keep the campaign chugging along.
However, for all his flamboyance on the pitch, Liverpool supporters will be surprised to hear that the 26-year-old is remarkably subdued off it, eschewing distractions in favor of a single-minded focus on leading his club to success. Even what many would consider an innocent distraction: playing (lots) of FIFA video games, the past time of many a footballer, is too much time wasted for the driven Senegalese forward:
”I never liked it, I never played the PlayStation. I think it is something that’s wasting your time. I do not want to lose mine against anything in the world,” Mané said speaking to WiwSport.
”I have never been to a party myself. It never went through my head. If I do not give everything I have to be a good player, I’ll never make it.”
It is such discipline and devotion to the team cause that Klopp will need in spades motivate his side through the business end of a campaign full of promise.