‘Lucky’ Mane trains his sights on Real Madrid
Sadio Mane says he is a “lucky boy” to play alongside Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino in Liverpool’s devastating forward line as he bids to sink Real Madrid in the Champions League final.
The Liverpool forward has struck 19 times this season and wants more as the Reds take on the holders for the European title in Kiev on Saturday.
“I think more goals are coming,” said the Senegal international. “Of course I am happy, but as a striker you’d love to score every single game to help your team.”
Mane, 26, has been the junior partner in a formidable forward trio this season. Salah has led the way with a 44 goals, while Firmino has weighed in with 27 in all competitions.
“Like I have always said, I have always been enjoying playing alongside these great players,” said Mane. “They make everything easier for me. I am a lucky boy. But we always talk about the front three. Don’t forget it starts from the guys behind. They make it easier. The power of Liverpool Football Club is the collective. We always do everything together, this is our power.”
Real are chasing a third successive European crown, a fourth in the past five years and a record-extending 13th in total.
Liverpool have won the title five times themselves but this is their first appearance in the final for 11 years and they did not even play in Europe last season.
The Spanish giants are the clear favourites, but Mane is confident Liverpool, who enjoyed impressive wins over Manchester City and Roma in the knockout stages, have enough quality to win.
“It was not easy, but now we are in the final,” he said. “Maybe that is a surprise for many people, but for us it’s something we have always believed in.
“Of course it will not be easy because we know they have experience and also they have qualities in the team. We respect them a lot, but we also have players and staff to beat any team in the world.” /
When Liverpool last beat Real Madrid to win the European Cup, Terry McDermott was the tournament’s top scorer and neither Cristiano Ronaldo nor Mohamed Salah were even born yet.
The 1981 final at the Parc des Princes in Paris, decided by Alan Kennedy’s late goal, earned Liverpool a third European crown in five seasons, at around the midway point of the club’s most dominant era.
McDermott played in all three finals. He scored the winner in the first, against Borussia Monchengladbach in 1977, and finished the last as the competition’s joint-highest scorer, on six with teammate Graeme Souness and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge of Bayern Munich.
On Tuesday, the former boxto-box midfielder, who grew up a stone’s throw away from Liverpool’s Anfield stadium, put his three trophies up for sale at a London auction.
They were expected to fetch about £15,000 each.
“My three kids are doing fine but they can put it into a house or pay off the mortgage,” McDermott said.
The memories, however, remain of when Liverpool last played Europe’s most glamorous team for the continent’s biggest prize.
“They [Real Madrid] were a good side in ’81 but they weren’t what they are now,” McDermott said. “We weren’t afraid of them, the opposite in fact. We’d been in the final a few times, knew what it was about. They were the inexperienced ones.”
Liverpool’s victory meant the European Cup sat in an English trophy cabinet for a fifth year in a row, just as it will be a fifth consecutive success for Spain if Real triumph on Saturday.
Liverpool had finished fifth in the league too, after ending with a 1-0 win over 12th-placed Manchester City, and there were eight days to wait before the final.
“The build-up is unbelievable but it’s frustrating as hell,” McDermott said. “One year we even went to Israel for a holiday because as the players will be finding out now, it’s the longest week of your life.”
Some tickets for the match in Kiev are selling for more than £10,000 each, with Real Madrid and Liverpool fans allocated just more than 33,000 seats of the 63,000 capacity.
Tickets in 1981 cost the equivalent of about £10 now, but they were just as hard to come by then.
Liverpool’s players flew to France on Aer Lingus, the team’s lucky airline, with family, friends and journalists packed into the back. Bob Paisley, the coach, sat at the front.
“He wasn’t much of a talker — ‘just go out and enjoy it’, he’d say,” McDermott recalled. “And we did, three times.” So what advice would Paisley have given for facing a player such as Ronaldo?
“Oh, he wouldn’t have worried much about him,” McDermott said. “He would have talked about his weaknesses — ‘he never cuts inside, never uses his left foot’, that sort of thing. But most of all he’d just make you believe you could do it.”
Perhaps Jurgen Klopp will be saying something similar to Trent Alexander-Arnold in Kiev on Saturday evening, although restraint is not quite the German’s style.
“They’re two great managers but this boy now is a bit different,” McDermott said. “He’s inspirational, the way he kicks every ball, makes every tackle. Paisley used to sit in the stand and watch with the chairman.”
Kennedy’s goal, an angled shot rifled into the far corner, settled a scruffy match, but that did nothing to dampen Liverpool’s celebrations, which began in Paris’s Moulin Rouge and ended in St George’s Square in Liverpool.
“We had a lot of beers and some of the lads went to the Moulin Rouge. Most of them didn’t get back until six or seven in the morning,” McDermott said. “We got off the plane and there were coaches on the tarmac waiting to take us to St George’s Square where all the fans were waiting.
“I’ve never seen anything like it and I never will again.”
Except, 37 years later, he hopes Liverpool’s current crop can pull off a repeat.
“I don’t care about Real Madrid, I’m convinced if Liverpool play well, they’ll win,” McDermott said. “It’s there for the winning. It’s their turn.”