- Sadio Mane has only one Liverpool teammate’s shirt on his wall
- The Anfield hero opened up on his time on Merseyside to Rio Ferdinand
- He remembers his teammates fondly, but one player stands tall
Sadio Mane recently revealed that only one former Liverpool star has the privilege of having his shirt hung in his house.
It is incredible to think that it has already been four years since the Senegal international left the Reds for Bayern Munich following a successful six-year spell.
The forward drew the curtain on his stint on Merseyside after helping them win every major trophy, including the Premier League and the UEFA Champions League.
Such is Mane’s legacy at Liverpool that he will be remembered as one of the club’s greatest players of this era.
This era, forged by Jurgen Klopp, has seen several players arrive at the club and etch their names into the history books.
Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Alisson, Andy Robertson – the list goes on. But one player had a far greater impact on Mane.
“More than a footballer” – When Mane named his favourite Liverpool teammate
There are compliments, there are tributes, and then there is what Mane said about Roberto Firmino.
Speaking to Rio Ferdinand in November 2025, the Al-Nassr attacker did not reach for statistics or silverware to make his case.
He reached for something far more human, and in doing so, reminded every Liverpool fan exactly what made the Brazilian so irreplaceable during the Klopp era.
Asked about Firmino by Ferdinand in an interview (20 November, 2025), Mane said: “Exceptional. I have never seen a football player and a human like Bobby. I have never seen a teammate like Bobby in my life. He’s the only player whose shirt I have put up in my house.”
Mane has shared dressing rooms with some of the most decorated players of his generation, including Cristiano Ronaldo. Of all of them, there is only one shirt on his wall.
The selflessness that set Firmino apart
What made Firmino so unique was never the goals, although he scored plenty of important ones.
It was about what he was willing to forgo so that those around him could flourish, and Mane is not shy to admit it.
He added: “What he’s able to do, I can’t, and I never see any player doing it because he’s special. Sometimes, he doesn’t care about anything. Sometimes, Salah can score; I can score. He doesn’t score or change him – he doesn’t care.
“You do that to me, I’ll be angry; Salah will be angry. I just look at him, I laugh, and I say, ‘What kind of a person is he?’
“I never saw him argue with anybody. I never saw him angry. He’s more than a footballer.”
It is a remarkable admission. One of the most prolific forwards of their era openly acknowledging that he would struggle to do what Firmino did every single week, and doing so with genuine admiration rather than embarrassment.
That quality is extraordinarily rare at the very top of the game, where ego is as much a tool of performance as technique.
Firmino’s role in Liverpool’s 2019 UEFA Champions League triumph and the 2019-20 title-winning season was built exactly on this foundation.
While Salah and Mane chased records, Bobby pressed, linked, and created – often invisible to the casual eye, but absolutely central to everything Klopp was building.
