Sakho Laces Up With The U23s

An actual game of football happened today where an actual Mamadou Sakho played an actual ninety minutes for the Liverpool U23 team as they went up against Wolfsburg. The last game Sakho played, and listen, I’ve got terrible recall of matches, but the information is out there, and the last game he played was in April. It was a Merseyside derby and we all went home with grins as Liverpool won 4-0 at Anfield. Good golly. Sakho scored the second. Again, information is everywhere. The Echo even goes on to tell us that that day of celebration was 162 days ago. But nobody tells time like that, you guys. Once you get over 90 days, we’re really done with days, I think.

By all accounts, the Frenchman had a solid effort at Prenton Park today as the U23s played in something called the Premier League International Cup. The fans cheered Mamadou when he was out to warm up and chanted his name when it was announced in the stadium. “Sakho, Sakho!” That’s pretty good. And as I understand it, he wasn’t half bad on the pitch either, showing some of his major league quality at times in a center back partnership with the one and only Tiago Abiola Delfim Almeida Ilori.

The game was eventually lost to Wolfsburg, who left the Wirral 2-1 winners. And while Mamadou was obviously exhausted at the final whistle, that’s a whole bunch of good minutes for a guy working his way back to peak fitness.

Sakho has been out of the team for a long time and his journey back into Jürgen Klopp’s plans would have been long just from a fitness perspective. But now we’ve got the drama to deal with and until we see Sakho on the bench or regularly playing with the first team, there will be questions about his relationship with Klopp and about his Liverpool future.

As you most likely know, it was Mamadou Sakho who did a little social media thing just five days ago that Klopp wasn’t too thrilled about. The French defender used Snapchat to make a statement about his frustration with not being included in the team. Opinions differ, as they do, on whether or not Sakho should have applied this bit of media pressure on the club. And while I wouldn’t be so quick to say that Sakho’s inclusion in the U23 game automatically means that he’s made his point to Klopp— because what do I know?—that’s how it’s perceived and maybe Sakho can at least use some of this buzz to jump start his mojo.

Some of us are rooting for you, you big dummy.