The Athletic’s Jack Pitt-Brooke has revealed that Tottenham Hotspur came close to signing Sadio Mane before he signed for Liverpool.
It was at Southampton that Mane hit the limelight after arriving at the club in 2014 from Red Bull Salzburg – the same summer that Mauricio Pochettino left St Mary’s to take over the job at Tottenham.
After two impressive seasons on the South Coast, Liverpool snapped up the forward in a £34m deal back in 2016 and he proved to be a terrific servant for the Reds in his six years at Anfield.
Mane scored 120 goals and provided 48 assists in 269 appearances for Liverpool (Transfermarkt), helping Jurgen Klopp’s men to win the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and the Carabao Cup during his time at the club.
His importance to the Merseysiders has been underlined by the club’s drastic decline this season following his departure to Bayern Munich last summer.
Pitt-Brooke has now revealed that Mane could have been a Tottenham player if the North Londoners had been decisive in 2016.
MORE SPURS STORIES
The journalist said on The View From The Lane’ podcast: “If they (Spurs) signed Zaha I think he would’ve been fantastic.
“The other forward they looked at in 2016 and they nearly got him I think, was Sadio Mane who has obviously turned out to be an unbelievably good footballer.”
Spurs Web Opinion
If my memory serves me correctly, it was actually in the summer of 2015 that we came close to signing Mane and not the subsequent year.
In the end, the club ended up signing Son instead of the Senegal international and one cannot say that the transfer worked out badly for us.
Keep up to date with all the latest Tottenham news and opinion by following SpursWeb’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
