Sadio Mane and Steven Gerrard both had impressive Liverpool careers, but the same can’t be said of the former Anfield flop who Mane considers his footballing hero
Sadio Mane and Steven Gerrard never crossed paths in Liverpool’s first team. Mane’s footballing hero did play alongside former Reds captain Gerrard, though, and he wasn’t a fan.
Senegal international Mane joined the Reds from Southampton in 2016, a little over 12 months after Gerrard left for LA Galaxy, and made himself a firm favourite with fans during more than half a decade with the club. The forward, now at Al-Nassr, won the Champions League in 2019 and succeeded where Gerrard failed by claiming a Premier League winner’s medal during his time at Anfield.
It was a different story when it came to Mane’s hero El-Hadji Diouf, though. Diouf’s achievements with Senegal are what endeared him to Mane, but the forward’s time with Liverpool was far less memorable – at least when it came to the positive on-field moments.
Early in his Liverpool spell, Mane was asked by the Premier League to name his idol in the competition. “When I was young I was watching El-Hadji Diouf, he was one of my heroes” he said in November 2016.
“Actually he was playing for Liverpool, so it made a big motivation for me as he was a great player for us. He was one of the best players ever in Senegal.”
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Diouf’s time at Anfield was brief. He joined from Lens with plenty of fanfare back in 2002, but he left two years later after struggling to make an impact. He rubbed Gerrard up the wrong way during his time with the club, too. There were moments of tension early on, but they would ultimately boil over during a pre-season friendly.
“Half-time of a preseason game, [there was a] fight between Diouf and Gerrard,” former Reds star Florent Sinama-Pongolle would later recall. “I was traumatised.
“Can you imagine the young ones seeing this and thinking that’s what professionals are like at that level? At half-time, in the dressing room. Stevie G is all like ‘you have to pass, you have to pass’ and [Diouf] just loses it.
“He didn’t speak English. His English was rubbish. You know what he did? They hated each other so much. Steven Gerrard arrives, he insults Diouf. ‘Hey, you f******’. And [Diouf] couldn’t answer, so he grabs Gerard Houllier and says, ‘Tell him, I’ll f*** his mum’. He came in and said, ‘I’m not his mate, I’ll do him in straight away’.”
Gerrard made his feelings clear about Diouf in his 2007 autobiography. “Being around Melwood and Anfield I knew which players were hungry, which players had Liverpool at heart. Diouf was just interested in himself,” the England international wrote.
“His attitude was all wrong. I felt he wasn’t really a***d about putting his body on the line to get Liverpool back at the top.”
Diouf stayed in English football for more than a decade, with his most productive spell coming with Bolton. And, speaking in 2012, he argued Gerrard’s hatred didn’t matter too much to him.
“What he said is only of interest to him,” he said. “All I worried about was the Senegal team, I took them to the World Cup quarter-finals in 2002.
“I was in Pele’s 100 players of the century. Not him. I respect him as a footballer, but there is nobody more egotistical than him.”
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