Liverpool legends Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino came up against each other in Saudi Arabia last night.
After leaving Anfield in 2022 and 2023 respectively, both Mane and Firmino have struggled to recapture the form that marked them out as modern-day Liverpool greats.
Mane had a poor year at Bayern Munich before a move to Al Nassr brought lightly better fortunes. Firmino meanwhile has endured a difficult season with Al Ahli.
It was the Senegalese who came out on top during last night’s match-up, Cristiano Ronaldo scoring a penalty to hand Al Nassr a 1-0 win. And after the game, the official Saudi Pro League X account posted a video of the Mane and Firmino reconciling after the match.
Shot inside the tunnel at the stadium, the pair are spotted chatting, laughing and hugging. With Firmino already holding a yellow Al Nassr shirt in his hand, Mane appears to signal that he’ll get Bobby one of his own shirts to take home, too. Sadio then walks off with a pat on the head from Ronaldo himself. Great to see them together again.
Mane and Firmino reunite
Mane and Firmino’s exchange together is a reminder of just how quickly things move on in football.
It doesn’t seem two minutes since the pair were starting every game together and winning trophy after trophy for Liverpool.
In fact, it has been almost a year now since Bobby left, and two since Sadio moved on to Munich.
From a Liverpool point of view, they could hardly have handled losing two of their biggest players of recent years better. It was a tough season after Mane left last year, but having brought in Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo, their attack always looked like coming good.
This season, things have really clicked. Between that trio, 41 goals have been scored. In their final season with Liverpool, Firmino and Mane managed a combined 34.
Of course, there is one more player in the mix, but given how good Liverpool’s old number’s nine and 10 were, it was always going to take something special to replace them.
With Diaz and Gakpo providing more Firmino-esque numbers, Nunez is scoring at a not dissimilar rate to what Mane did.
As the LFC Legends game next week speeds into view, with former heroes like Fernando Torres returning, maybe it won’t be so long until we see either of these two back in a similar vein. Let’s hope so.