Former Manchester City winger, Trevor Sinclair has insisted that Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, is responsible for forward, Sadio Mane’s exit from Anfield.
Sinclair believes that the comments from Klopp on the Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON, was the main reason Mane left Liverpool for Bayern Munich.
The former England international also added that the Senegal international was not respected enough and that forced him to leave Liverpool for the Bundesliga champions.
Mane was officially confirmed as a Bayern player earlier this week.
Sinclair told talkSPORT: “This Sadio Mane transfer is obviously universally accepted now. He has left Liverpool Football Club as a club legend.
“Let me tell you why he’s left. One, I don’t think he has ever been lauded and appreciated at the football club [Liverpool] like Virgil van Dijk or Mo Salah. Two, the fact that Liverpool let his contract go down to the last year kind of suggests that is how they felt about him.”
He added: “Three, I think the main thing is that Jurgen Klopp lost him when he came out and belittled the AFCON tournament which his [Senegal] manager Aliou Cisse had to come out and defend the AFCON and said ‘You were coming second until our African players started playing for you’.
“Mane is a man of principles, you have seen him buy hospitals, buy schools, and all the rest of it in his home town of Senegal and it is for these reasons I feel Sadio Mane’s thought, ‘You know what, I am going, I am leaving the club’. He’s had a good time, he has been a club legend but I don’t think he could play on after that.”