Despite the fact that Liverpool’s 2022 campaign is still unfolding in an unusual manner, it is still true that the most crucial match that their two premier strikers have participated in this year did not take place in a Reds shirt.
Then it will be tripled by Tuesday.
Sadio Mane scored the penalty that every one of Senegal had been waiting for, lifting the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time as a football-crazed country that has produced so many brilliant players – both for their own national team and others – raised the trophy for the first time.
In the middle of the post-shootout celebrations, Mane was quick to wrap an arm around his distraught Liverpool teammate Mohamed Salah, who had just watched his dream of guiding Egypt to triumph crumble. It was a huge setback at a time when there is so much focus on what he achieved in the game on a personal level.
Senegal’s celebrations will have hardly ceased, and Egypt’s wounds will not have entirely healed, yet the pair are ready to fight toe-to-toe in a two-legged playoff to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar later this year.
Because while only one of Salah or Mane will be taking their place on the global stage in November, the very real prospect that neither will be at Liverpool beyond the end of next season continues.
The contract impasse around both has reached a stage when the inaction begins to look like a choice, with Salah’s new deal – or lack of one – has now become a daily discussion point.
There is much less talk around Mane’s future, something which leads you to believe that his people are perhaps waiting to see what happens with the Egyptian before making any definitive moves.
After all, if Salah were to stay on new, enormous wages then Mane could rightly ask for a deal at around 80-90 percent of that, but if Salah were to leave then Mane could be the new top earner at the club.
All of that is speculation, but at least one thing will become clear after Tuesday: one of the pair will be facing a hectic 2022-23.
Because if, as is still expected, both Salah and Mane will be at Liverpool next season, then one of them by then 30-year-olds will have to contend with the stresses and strains of a usual Reds campaign (or an unusual one such as we’re currently seeing), a World Cup jammed into the middle of the season and then another Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast in the summer of 2023.
Both players would doubtless welcome the challenge, but with Liverpool monitoring their workloads closely and Jurgen Klopp acutely aware of the demands on players these days, these possibilities are sure to have entered contract discussions.
Mane once famously said that “tiredness is in the head” shortly after returning from the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations and heading straight into Liverpool’s league-winning campaign, but his own drop-off in 2020-21 has since proven he might have been a little hasty.
For while whichever one of him or Salah who misses out on the World Cup will obviously be devastated, the prospect of a full summer’s rest and then a month off in the middle of next season might conversely make Liverpool be more willing to part with extra cash in terms of a contract offer, or maybe even adding another year on top as burnout fears ease.
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