I thought Sadio Mane was horrendous until one man changed everything for him

Shane Long thought Sadio Mane was "horrendous" when he first arrived in the Premier League, only to be proven totally wrong by the future Liverpool hero. Mane came through the youth ranks of Generation Foot before signing his first professional contract with Metz in 2011, with Red Bull Salzburg snapping him up the following year.

Bagging 45 goals and 32 assists in just 87 games for the Austrian giants made a wealth of larger sides take notice of the fast forward, with Southampton bringing him to the English top flight in 2014 in a £10million deal. And while fans of the Saints were excited to see what the Senegalese international could do in the English top flight, Long - who was also at Southampton at the time - wasn't convinced by his abilities at the time.

Speaking on Ben Foster's Fozcast, Long admitted: "When Sadio first came with first team, he was horrendous. Obviously, he wasn’t horrendous, I take that back. But he had these moments where you thought ‘ooh he’s got something here’. You used to kick him and hurt yourself, he had that strength about him.

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"He could take on everybody and then kick it into Row Z trying to cross the ball, he could run it off the pitch." However, Long noted that then-manager Ronald Koeman was able to develop Mane - whose former sides face one another on the south coast tomorrow (November 24) - into the player he is today.

He added: "But then Koeman managed to coach him and train him and he just hit this run of form which made you think this guy could go to the very top." While Koeman failed to accomplish anything at St Mary's in terms of silverware during his stint with the club between 2014 and 2016, Long believes that he was able to bring out Mane's full potential, fine tuning the player and improving weak areas within him.

After bagging 25 goals in 75 games for Southampton, Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool came a-knocking for his services in 2016. Mane signed the dotted line at Anfield for £34m - making him the most expensive player in African footballing history at the time. Mane made 269 appearances for Liverpool between 2016 and 2022, helping the side to its first-ever Premier League title in the 2019/20 campaign.

Mane also celebrated a Champions League victory with the Reds in 2018/19, while bagging an FA Cup and an EFL Cup a-piece in the 2021/22 season. After scoring 120 goals and bagging 42 assists for the side, Mane made the move to Bayern Munich in 2022 in a reported £35m deal.

And while hopes were high that the star man would be able to keep up his emphatic form in the Bundesliga, Mane struggled to make much of an impact in Munich. The 32-year-old scored just 12 goals in 38 appearances for the club, who still managed to lift the Bundesliga and DFB Pokal in the 2022/23 campaign.

Mane's time in Germany was incredibly short lived however, making the move to Saudi Pro League side Al-Nassr last summer in a £24m deal which saw him bag a reported £650,000 per week in wages. Since linking up with Cristiano Ronaldo in Riyadh, Mane has hit the back of the net 24 times in 64 games, lifting the Arab Club Champions Cup last year.

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After 10 games played in the 2024/25 campaign, Al-Nassr currently sit third in the Saudi Pro League behind leaders Al-Hilal and second-place Al-Ittihad. He has played every game of the season thus far, and has netted three times in total with hopes of bagging the league title when the season comes to a close next year.