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Sadio Mané can’t stop smiling. His smile is infectious and honest and it glistens across the screen, greeting me as if I was a childhood friend, not an interviewer. We haven’t even exchanged a word and I already know what I presumed all along, it’s impossible to not like him.
Sadio Mané can’t stop dreaming. The euphoria from winning the Africa Cup of Nations with his beloved Senegal is still with him, and it’s a feeling he doesn’t want to say goodbye to just yet.
“I can’t explain to you how happy I am winning this trophy for my people,” says Mané, speaking to ¡Qué Golazo! from his home in Liverpool. He is quite literally in a state of wonder.
“Sometimes I think I am dreaming, and when I look up, there is always a smile on my face, so it’s incredible.”
I playfully remind him that it’s not a dream, it’s not trick of his subconscious. It’s real. He just smiles and replies, “I think so!”
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Mané’s wonder isn’t about the realization of winning a trophy, or at least not just about winning a trophy, because silverware to him is about context. Of course it matters. It mattered two years ago when he helped Liverpool win the Premier League for the first time in 30 years, and it mattered when he lifted the Champions League trophy a year before that. He cares deeply about the fans and what they meant to the community. So trophies are not just about the victory, it’s about what it represents, and for him to win his continent’s biggest honor for the first time in Senegal’s history, its the biggest jewel of them all because it awarded a vision he had never seen before. All those videos from Dakar you watched on social media? The open bus being greeted by thousands of fans?…
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Source : cbssports
