WHEN every step, every pass – even facial expressions of football players – are scrutinised for stories, Sadio Mane’s bench-based Burnley boil-over was a back-page banker.
And so it proved. A few days on, and the analysis and over-analysis, goes on. Passes between the pair have been counted and recounted. Assists detailed. Graphics drawn.
Ian Wright says it was an exasperated forward at the end of his tether with a team-mate. Jürgen Klopp isn’t arsed, Jordan Henderson liked it, and James Milner social media posts banged yet again as he took the Mickey in glorious fashion.
Even the men at the centre of the incident, Mane and Mo Salah, have joked about it, while Bobby Firmino let his facial expressions do the talking.
Yet the buts continue. What if Mane really is pissed off? What if they don’t get on?
With the hindsight of watching the ball spin into the Burnley net only three times when it could and should have been more, it’s easy to empathise with Mane’s emotional eruption. Salah should have passed. And he has been guilty of choosing shot over pass in the past, too. Expect it to happen again soon.
For that supposed football faux pas, he will join a very busy club of forwards through the ages that have been labelled selfish at one time or another.
Many were not only labelled as such but instructed to be so. Ian Rush, Liverpool’s all-time record goalscorer with a phenomenal 346 goals in 660 games, wasn’t always the dead-eyed finisher that would dovetail so beautifully with Kenny Dalglish.
The Welshman went goalless for his first seven matches in the Liverpool first team and questions around his ability began to emerge.
"The funny thing is I thought I was playing well," Rush told The Guardian. "I figured that it was a team game and the team was winning so I was doing fine.
“But then Bob Paisley called me aside and told me to be selfish – he said that I was a striker and that meant I had to score goals. It seems a simple thing but it made all the difference."
Following the command of Paisley, in 1981-82 and 1982-83, Rush scored 30 and 31 goals respectively. In the same campaigns, Dalglish bagged 20 and 22.
No Liverpool forward line pair had reached the 20-plus mark in back-to-back seasons since those heady days…until Mo Salah and Sadio Mane, the first duo to knock in 20 or more goals in successive campaigns for Liverpool for 36 years.
Only one pairing in red has ever managed to hit the 20-goal mark three seasons on the spin: Roger Hunt and Ian St John in 1961-62, 1962-63 and 1963-64.
Can Mane, with four goals already this season, and Salah, who has three, match that feat? You wouldn't bet against it, would you?
Here’s the video of Roberto Firmino trying not to laugh in between Sadio Mane and Mo Salah #LFCpic.twitter.com/VOdikhi3gE
— GiveMeSport Football (@GMS__Football) August 31, 2019
For all the talk of a ‘feud’, ‘spat’, ‘row’ or whatever term of tabloidese that has been tagged to the tantrum today, there seems little to worry about long term. In fact, the moment can be seen as a demonstration of the hunger that made those goal returns possible.
An international break means Mane’s moment might linger longer. But little points to it being a deep cause for concern.
Mane-Salah issues have been suggested before. When the Senegal player had to switch flanks to make way for the new boy. When the Egyptian’s star shone brighter. When Mane was missing and Salah was scoring.
Since then the prolific pair have shared the Premier League Golden Boot with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and lifted the European Cup.
As much as media training and players’ parlance for the cliche can make it appear so, footballers are not robots. And a bit of raw passion, some visible emotion, a sign they care as much as those in the stands is no bad thing.
A cursory cruise through the memory banks can turn up a tide of players having a momentary lapse of reason in the heat of a big match.
At Anfield, Mane has previously waved his arms around, albeit to gee up the crowd after kissing the turf one too many times for his liking as a result of desperate challenges from opponents.
The Kop loved it.
In terms of player-on-player rucks and rows, this one was hardly Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer trading blows or David Batty and Graeme Le Saux having a game-time straightener
And while there have been efforts to paint Mane and Salah as good friends since, even if they aren’t, so what?
Andy Cole and Teddy Sheringham famously didn’t speak to each other while rattling in goals for Manchester United, while the aforementioned Rush and Dalglish – despite the most prolific of partnerships – were never “bessies” in their playing days.
Rush again told The Guardian: “We very rarely spoke to each other off the pitch. I wouldn't say we had the same sort of relationship that Andy Cole and Teddy Sheringham supposedly did; I mean, it wasn't that we disliked each other but we certainly didn't mix. We had different lifestyles – he lived in Southport and was into golf and I lived in North Wales and my type of people were guys like Ronnie Whelan, Jan Molby and Terry McDermott.”
The reaction to the Mane-Salah moment from inside Liverpool is also telling. When there is a real issue at a club between players it’s rare for it to remain secret. It was common knowledge that Daniel Sturridge and Luis Suarez were not mates away from the football pitch. Players seemingly queued up to tell tales of the stench of the Mario Balotelli-shaped bad egg. And going back further it was clear there were issues between Kenny Dalglish and John Aldridge once upon a time.
Mane’s touchline temper, despite the best efforts of many to make more of it, is a pumped player’s inner chimp running amok on adrenaline and no more.
Bruce Grobbelaar and Steve McManaman once raised hands to each other on the field but all was forgotten by the time they were stripped and showered. To suggest an incident much lower on the Richter scale of rage festered longer than it took the team coach to return to Merseyside seems a reach.
Like Jamie Carragher bollocking Alvaro Arbeloa at West Brom, Steven Gerrard firing daggers at Rafa Benitez for substituting Fernando Torres or the saintly ‘Sir’ Roger Hunt throwing down his shirt after he was subbed by Bill Shankly, the storm will fade, the game will go on.
Jurgen Klopp said after the game: “We are not always choir boys, they really are men! So we spoke afterwards and it is fine and everything is good again.”
Could he really say anything else? Not long ago he was striding on the pitch with raging eyes in full view of the watching world to give it both barrels to Xherdan Shaqiri.
Most fans will take that passion over passive any day. The Reds march on.
