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The Watford bus was just about to leave Anfield but Sadio Mané had a message for Troy Deeney. “Take care of my boy,” the Liverpool forward urged. “He’s a shy boy, shy boy.” Standing awkwardly in the background with his hands in his pockets and peering down at the floor, Ismaïla Sarr looked exactly that. “He just needs to speak English, he’s working on it,” came the reply from Deeney. “He’s a good boy.”
After a 2-0 defeat in Nigel Pearson’s first match as manager on 14 December that left Watford six points from safety, Sarr had plenty of reasons to feel sorry for himself. The club’s £30m record signing from Rennes last summer was beset by injury problems after his arrival in England and had just spurned a golden opportunity to record his second Premier League goal against Liverpool, embarrassingly missing the ball when it fell to him unmarked in front of the Kop with the score level.
A month on, however, Mané’s advice to Deeney seems to have paid off. Sarr has been an integral reason behind Watford’s rapid rise up the table, having scored crucial goals in the wins over Manchester United and Aston Villa before setting up Abdoulaye Doucouré for the opening goal in the crucial victory against Bournemouth on Sunday. But the 21-year-old’s performances have come as no surprise to Mady Touré, who first met Sarr at his Génération Foot academy in Dakar when the player was 14.
“He’s doing well at the moment because I think he is starting to adapt to English football,” Touré says. “At the start when he was transferred for €35m there was a sort of handbrake on but I think he has taken that off now. That’s no surprise, he has always been like that, ever since we first took him. Ismaïla is a gazelle, so he needs time. Now he has got his bearings and he is starting to play well. It’s not surprising because he is a very good player.
“He needs to be trusted by the coach. If he has the coach’s confidence … He’s an introverted lad, you have to go towards him. That’s his nature. Ismaïla doesn’t talk much. If the coach takes him under his wing like a son, he is very affectionate but you have to go towards him. He needs to feel people around him. If he feels that, he can do a lot of damage [on the pitch]. I think this is a year of transition for him.”
Génération Foot, established in 2000 by Touré with the support of the singer Youssou N’Dour, a childhood friend, is also Mané’s alma mater and has produced more than 10 full internationals as well winning Senegal’s league twice in the past three years with a side made up largely of teenagers. Sarr, who was born in Saint-Louis on Senegal’s north-west coast, moved to the academy after being spotted by one of Touré’s army of scouts in the west African country before, like Mané and the former Newcastle striker Papiss Cissé, joining the French club Metz.
Touré’s prediction to the Guardian in 2014 that Mané could one day emulate Lionel Messi or Neymar has almost come true after an outstanding year for the Liverpool forward in which he was crowned as Africa’s best player for the first time but he has a different forecast for Sarr.
“Ismaïla and Sadio don’t have the same style,” Touré says. “What I can say is that Ismaïla is a little like Cristiano Ronaldo. And Ronaldo is his idol. They have quite a similar way of playing. I said Sadio would blow up in England and I can tell you that Ismaïla will do the same. He will even win a Ballon d’Or too. He is fast, powerful and now that he has his bearings … and it’s only his first season, you will see how he gets better and progresses. I think he is well set to become one of the best players in England and the world.”
As for Mané’s advice for Deeney, Touré admits he watched the video of their encounter at Anfield filled with pride. “It was great,” he says. “Sadio is his big brother. He is one of the icons of world football, so it’s natural he recommends his younger brother.”
Footage of N’Dour performing his tribute song to Mané at the Grand Bal à Mbour music festival at the start of December has gone viral, with the singer most famous in the UK for his single 7 Seconds with Neneh Cherry paying tribute to the Liverpool forward after he finished fourth behind Messi in last year’s Ballon d’Or. “Sadio, of course you did not win this time but you win a place in GOLD in the heart of any African,” N’Dour wrote on Twitter.
But while Touré is justifiably honoured by the success of a player he frequently refers to as “my son”, he insists this is just the start for Mané and believes it may be time for the 27-year-old to leave Anfield at the end of the season.
“The fact Sadio has won the African Ballon d’Or will spur him on to win the European one too,” he says. “That’s his objective. Sadio always told me he would become one of the best players in the world. He said that to me and now he is among them but he has to leave Liverpool now. It’s his last year and he has to leave Liverpool when it’s up to go to Barcelona or Real Madrid.”
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