A former Liverpool player has said that ‘one day’ he will speak out fully about the manner of his exit from Anfield, having left Merseyside under a cloud.
In Jurgen Klopp’s first pre-season as Reds manager in 2016, Mamadou Sakho was sent home from the Reds’ tour of the USA after being accused of lacking ‘respect’ by reporting late for three meetings, and two months later he posted a broadside against his then-manager on Snapchat at 3am.
The Frenchman was loaned out to Crystal Palace midway through that campaign before moving to Selhurst Park on a permanent £26m deal in August 2017, and he’s now playing for Torpedo Kutaisi in Georgia.
Sakho vows to ‘one day’ address Liverpool exit
The 35-year-old has given an interview to the Liverpool Echo in which he vowed to ‘one day’ reveal his side of the story regarding how he left the Reds.
Sakho said: “It’s just football. Sometimes few things happen inside. I cannot talk about it, but it’s like this. It’s football. Small things are always good to take as an excuse. But the reality wasn’t this. But it’s fine, you know?
“Seriously, because a player is late to eat, the time’s 7.15 and he comes at 7.18, now he leaves the club? Come on. What I wrote [on Snapchat] was the truth, but the truth always takes the stairs and the lie takes the elevator.
“You have football that people see, and you have a few things inside but they cannot talk about it, so I always keep it for me as a man and that’s it. I never talk and I would not speak for the moment because it’s not important.
“I really enjoyed my time in Liverpool. It was a really great moment for me in my career and that’s it. I told you, I’m a positive man, so I don’t like to speak about the inside of football, you know?
“I will speak about it one day, of course. Of course one day I will speak, but not now. It is not the right moment. When I do my documentary of my career and of my life, all the truth will go out in that moment, just for fun.”
Sakho had some real highs and lows at Liverpool
To say that Sakho had an eventful final few months at Liverpool under Klopp would be an understatement.
He scored in memorable wins over Borussia Dortmund and Everton towards the end of the 2015/16 season, but shortly after that Merseyside derby, he was investigated by UEFA for violating an anti-doping rule and hit with a 30-day suspension from football.
The case was later thrown out and in 2020 he won a financial settlement from the World Anti-Doping Agency, but then came the pre-season run-in with his manager and his banishment from the American tour.
Sakho was subsequently frozen out at Liverpool and, in the aforementioned Snapchat rant, angrily disputed Klopp’s public assertion that his non-involvement was due to a lack of fitness stemming from a summer injury (The Independent).
While the Frenchman didn’t always look convincing during his time at Anfield, he also enjoyed spells of consistently good form, and it was a shame that his Reds career ended in such acrimony.
We await to see what he says about the manner in which he left the club, whenever he sees fit to reveal his full version of events.
