admin Yaya Toure has revealed that he asked Manchester City to sign Sadio Mane before Liverpool, having been impressed by what he saw from the Senegal star at former club Southampton.
Southampton spent the best part of £12m to bring Mane to the Premier League from Red Bull Salzburg, where he had scored 45 goals in just over two seasons.
It was the Golden Saints team consisting of Graziano Pelle, Jose Fonte, Victor Wanyama, Dusan Tadic, young James Ward-Prowse, then Virgil van Dijk and Oriol Romeu, who finished seventh and sixth in a row.
English Premier League seasons. , Mane personally scored 10 and then 11 league goals, the latter including a record-fast hat-trick against Aston Villa in 2015 scored in just 176 seconds.
In 2016, the winger was Liverpool’s first major signing under Jurgen Klopp for £34m, going on to help the club win the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup and create become a third of the killer trio along with Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino.
But it seems Toure has hinted that Manchester City, who signed Raheem Sterling in 2015, Nolito and Leroy Sane in 2016, all in wide attacking roles, will have a chance to achieve this. that’s faster.
“I always wanted to play with him [Mane]. When I was at City, at the time when he was at Southampton, I highly regarded him and I was asking some of my superiors to just sign him. But in the end it just didn’t happen,” Toure told BBC Match of the Day Africa: Top 10.
“After that Klopp had the eyes to get him and now look what he did for Liverpool, he was brilliant. I like him, I like him as a player.”
Manchester United had made an attempt to sign Mane in 2015 after his debut season at Southampton when Louis van Gaal was in charge at Old Trafford. United went on to sign Anthony Martial soon after, but were back in for Mane in 2016 and nearly signed him.
“I was really, really close because I even met up with [United],” Mane later revealed.
“So I was coming, I was there and I spoke with the boss who was there before [Van Gaal]. “They made an offer, but in the same week, Klopp called me. He said: ‘I think it’s the right club. The right coach for you, and I think it’s better that you go to Liverpool’.”
