Cody Gakpo can prevent repeat of Gary Neville’s Sadio Mané narrative amid clever Liverpool plan

When Liverpool legend Sadio Mané left the club last summer, there was nothing by way of pomp and ceremony.

That’s because Mané’s intention to depart was only made public after the Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid, rather than in the weeks before.

Unlike Roberto Firmino, the winger’s contract wasn’t due to expire at the end of the season, and it was simply assumed that he would be staying put. At the very least, there was uncertainty around his future.

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By contrast, fans have known that Firmino’s time at the club was coming to an end since early March.

It all built to the crescendo of his final home game against Aston Villa on Saturday, when Firmino scored a late equalizer in front of the Kop. After the game, he walked through a guard of honor from his teammates for an on-field presentation and took in one final lap of the stadium as all four corners of the ground serenaded him.

For the second summer in a row, a member of the club’s iconic front three is on his way. For much of this season, there’s been a narrative that Liverpool have missed Mané, one that began in earnest when Sky Sports’ Gary Neville propagated it back in August.

When you actually dig into it, it doesn’t hold weight. If anything, Mané has missed Liverpool more than his former employers have missed him, as Tom Beattie explores in this article.

But still, you can see a world where there’s a similar dialog around Firmino next season.

After all, the 31-year-old has been one of Klopp’s most trusted lieutenants and a player synonymous with the system. Crucially, he also possesses a skillset none of his teammates have been able to replicate for years.

His qualities are so subtle and yet so important, the perfect ingredients for a ‘Liverpool didn’t know what it had until it was gone’ argument, much as we’ve seen with Georginio Wijnaldum.

The onus will be on Cody Gakpo to prevent a repeat. Liverpool recruited the Dutchman from PSV Eindhoven in January as a long-term heir to Firmino, a plan that may pay dividends earlier than expected.

The club also tried to replace Mané even before he’d gone by bringing in Luis Díaz (in January 2022) and Darwin Núñez (last summer), but the former has been injured for most of the season, while Núñez has struggled somewhat, so question marks over the sale of the Senegalese persisted.

To adequately succeed Firmino, Gakpo will, first and foremost, need to score and create. His current tally of six goals and three assists in 25 appearances is reasonable, but he’ll be expected to deliver at an improved rate next season.

But more interestingly, he also needs to do things that made Firmino unique. In an attacking sense, he must be a highly intelligent facilitator and, defensively, he must press with the effectiveness and enthusiasm that Klopp valued so much in his predecessor.

Thankfully, there are already promising signs in both departments, and that’s why he’s being favored for a starting role at this point.

In a sense, Saturday’s events must have been a little daunting for Gakpo, who saw more clearly than ever the depth of the admiration for Firmino among his teammates, coaches and of course the Liverpool fans.

But football moves on. If Gakpo lives up to the hopes of Klopp and co., Firmino won’t be at the forefront at the discourse next season when Neville and the rest of the pundit class conduct their analysis. Instead, he’ll merely be a nostalgia-rich afterthought.