On Tuesday, Senegalese soccer star Sadio Mane recorded his name in letters of gold after winning the 2019 African Player of the Year award.
Mane outperformed his Egyptian teammate Mohamed Salah and the Algerian Riyad Mahrez, Manchester City player during the celebration in Hurghada, Egypt.
Mani's journey started from a small village in Senegal called Seidio located on the Casamance River, where he was born in 1992 and raised in a family interested in the Islamic call.
His father worked as an imam of the village mosque, and he lived most of his childhood with his uncle due to the difficult financial circumstances of his parents.
Signs of Mani's interest in the ball appeared early with the children of his village, so that his father and his uncle sell all the crops produced by their farms in order to save money for his travel to the capital Dakar and to search for the first road to stardom.
In Dakar Mani started his career with Generation Foot, after passing the club's tests.
He managed to kidnap the eyes of French Metz linked to a financing contract with Generation Foot, and he had to travel to France without his parents' knowledge for fear that they would prevent him from realizing his dream.
He was included in the junior sector of the Metz club and was escalated to the first team for the 2011-2012 season, moving on to the Austrian Red Bull Salzburg in a deal worth four million euros to become the third most expensive player to be sold in the history of the French club.
Mane left his mark with Red Bull Salzburg to win the League and Cup titles, and then moved to Southampton after entering into trouble with Austrian club officials.
In 2016 he moved to the ranks of Liverpool in a deal valued at about forty million euros, to enter the world of fame and stardom.
On the humanitarian front, the British newspaper "Sun" described Manny as the most humble player in the world after the video in which he helped a member of his country carry water bottles to the stadium before the Teranga Lions match against Congo in the African Nations Qualifiers 2021.
Mani has already sponsored many humanitarian projects in his country, and has allocated periodic assistance to many poor families.
One of the most prominent humanitarian situations is that he entered a Liverpool mosque and participated in cleaning the toilets, which prompted the English newspapers to ask, "What pays a player who gets a salary exceeding one hundred thousand euros per week to do that?"
This world star does not hide his eagerness to contribute to charity, expressing his feelings of suffering, and among his most famous statements was "I do not want to buy ten Ferrari cars and twenty hours and a private plane ... I tested difficult times and played ball barefoot ... I did not receive any education. Today I can help my family and the people of my country ... build schools and playgrounds and buy clothes and food for them ... I prefer to give my family some of what my Lord has given me. "