In June 2022, Bayern Munich announced the signing of Sadio Mane.
Such was the excitement that Bayern president Herbert Hainer used the deal to emphasise
the club’s “gravitational pull” and the “appeal of the Bundesliga” more generally.
But just a year later, Mane - intended to be a transformational superstar - would be gone,
having made little impact on either the club or the league.
So, what happened to Sadio Mane?
*title*
Context is important.
Mane was 30 years-old when he joined Bayern and had played over 60 games
for Liverpool and Senegal combined during the previous season. It was also the fifth
straight season during which he’d taken part in over 50 matches and,
for many of those, he’d played within the physical intensity demanded by Jurgen Klopp.
His new team had also recently sold Robert Lewandowski,
who was both a record-setting goalscorer and the player around whom Bayern’s attack had
operated for the last decade. Mane was starting afresh, but Bayern were too.
Even so, Mane’s first competitive appearance
promised much. In the German Super Cup in August 2022, Bayern beat RB Leipzig 5-3,
playing with impressive attacking fluency and with Mane scoring his first goal.
Instead of being a like-for-like replacement for Lewandowski, Mane was signed to be a more
versatile forward, used to score goals, but to also extract more from other attacking
players, such as Kingsley Coman, Jamal Musiala, Serge Gnabry and Leroy Sane.
Bayern then thrashed Eintracht Frankfurt and Bochum, and easily defeated Wolfsburg,
with Mane playing either as a No.9, or as part of a front-two.
The form wouldn’t last. As summer turned to Autumn, Bayern began to lose their
momentum. Bayern drew with Gladbach and lost to Augsburg and, in both, Mane showed signs
that he was struggling to adapt to Nagelsmann’s 4-2-3-1 and its differences from Klopp’s 4-3-3.
While many of his best performances for Liverpool had also pivoted around the
rare abilities of false-nine Roberto Firmino, Bayern lacked an equivalent player – at times,
they even expected him to be the Firmino-like foil.
Mane’s changing role is reflected in this data set which compares his last season in
England with his first in Germany. It shows the tweaks in his game. There was a greater
burden on him to be a creator and to be more progressive with the ball at his feet.
Following the defeat to Augsburg, Nagelsmann added a furtehr change,
pushing Mane wide to the left and selecting Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting as his No.9 instead.
Mane would score just four more times in the Bundesliga between October and May, recording
his lowest league goal-tally (7) since his 2011-12 season at Metz, when he was a teenager.
A partial explanation was a November injury to his fibula, which cost him the chance to
play at the World Cup and saw him miss 9 Bundesliga games. Those absences also
make his raw statistics misleading. In his final season in the Premier League,
in 2021-22, he had averaged .51 goals per 90. During the 2022-23 Bundesliga,
adjusted to reflect the time actually spent on the pitch, that fell just slightly to .44 per 90.
Nevertheless, the perception of underperformance was difficult to overcome – the lack of
pure volume contrasted unfavourably with Lewandowski, creating an unhelpful comparison.
There were other issues, too. He appeared to struggle with the squad dynamics at Bayern.
For much of his Liverpool career he’d been a guaranteed starter. In Germany,
that wasn’t the case. Essentially, Bayern had signed a player for whom they didn’t
have a role. In addition, they also had many players who could play the same position as him,
either as a forward or as a wide-midfielder, and that uncertainty bred difficulties.
(Design note: LMs – Sane, Musiala, Gnabry. FWDs – Muller, Choupo-Moting, Gnabry)
Writing for The Athletic in April, Raphael Honigstein wrote that:
“Close observers noticed (that Mane) was sometimes trying too hard to do something
special that justified his selection rather than making the obvious and less eye-catching move.”
Then-club CEO Oliver Kahn also commented, saying that:
Mane “is not used to the type of competition for places we
have here. It wasn’t like that at Liverpool.”
The real cracks appeared in the Spring of 2023.
Mane was only used as a late substitute in the last-16 tie with Paris Saint-Germain and,
while reports of an outright rift with Nagelsmann were exaggerated,
there were suggestions that Mane found aspects of his more technical coaching unfavourable.
He would be dismissed in March 2023 and replaced by Thomas Tuchel,
but that had little effect on Mane – in fact, his season would quickly fall to its lowest ebb.
Following Bayern’s 3-0 defeat to Manchester City in the first leg of the Champions League
quarter-final, Mane punched teammate Leroy Sane, following a disagreement that had begun
on the pitch. Bayern would suspend him in the aftermath and fine him €250,000.
He would be reintegrate, but under Tuchel his position continued to shift. He played
on the left of 4-1-4-1, up front and alongside Thomas Muller in a 3-1-4-2,
and as a lone forward again in a 4-2-3-1. Mane, however, would complete 90 minutes in
the Bundesliga just once before the end of the season, struggling for any sustained momentum.
That Bayern unexpectedly won the Bundesliga made little difference to an increasingly negative
media cycle. Furthermore, on the day that their title was confirmed, sporting director Hassan
Salihamidzic and CEO Oliver Kahn, both of whom had responsibility for signing Mane, were dismissed.
Bayern were remodelling in a way that didn’t necessarily include him. And,
as pre-season for the 2023-24 season began, Tuchel gave a clear indication that that was the case.
“Sadio fell short of the expectations last season”,
he said, “we have a line-up that’s very difficult for him.”
Days later, Mane would even snap at a local reporter,
taking issue with the tone of his previous coverage.
"you are killing me every day and now you want me to talk to
you guys? He said, declining an interview request.
It characterised the tension. It also suggested that his
time at Bayern had reached breaking point.
It was of little surprise, then, when it was announced that a lucrative deal with Saudi Arabian
side Al Nassr had been agreed and that, after just 13 months, Bayern and Mane were bound for divorce.