Jürgen Klopp believes Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah will follow the example of Kobe Bryant by showing the best can cope with failure and using their misses to spur them on.
Mané has gone nine games without scoring and spurned a golden chance when he blazed over the bar in Liverpool’s defeat at Leicester on Tuesday, while Salah missed a penalty in the Premier League for the first time since 2017.
But Klopp, who will not be on the touchline at Chelsea on Sunday after testing positive for Covid, argued that disappointment is something elite sportsmen encounter more often than lesser players because of their bravery in taking responsibility time and again and getting into the positions to miss. He cited how Bryant, who scored the fourth-most points in the NBA, holds the record for most missed shots, 14,481.
“Top, top, top-class players deal constantly with failure,” Klopp said. “That’s our life. That’s what you learn pretty early as a footballer. The better you are, the more often you will fail because you come constantly in these decisive moments.
“None of us has ever succeeded in all difficult situations. That’s how it is. Kobe Bryant is still the player with the most missed situations in NBA history and he is one of the greatest players ever.
“You have to try it. You have to come in these situations and then you can fail. If you fail there, no problem, go again and everything will be fine. That is pretty much the mindset Mo is in and Sadio as well.”
Salah and Mané will make their final appearances before going to the African Cup of Nations but with a very different backdrop. Whereas the Senegalese has equalled his longest drought for Liverpool, the Egyptian has been directly involved in an unrivalled 24 goals in the Premier League this season.
As Klopp accepted, Salah rarely needs to respond to major setbacks. “We don’t have a lot of experience with Mo of dealing with ‘crisis’ or whatever because he didn’t have to,” he said.
“The penalty just makes him more greedy to score a goal in the game, usually, and if we bring him more often in promising situations then I am pretty sure he would have finished one of them off.”
Mané has not scored any of Liverpool’s past 25 goals but does have a propensity to deliver goals in fits and spurts and Klopp is convinced his latest barren run will end. “Sadio has no problem with confidence, but the momentum finishing-wise is not there at the moment,” he said.
“Pretty much all strikers have to go through these kind of things. You have to take it from time to time and then it will be good again. It happened to Sadio before and he came out of it. He scored incredibly important goals for us and I’m really positive that he has chances to score [today].”
His belief that Mané is performing well was supported by the footage compiled by one of his backroom staff when he got a welcome surprise on Friday. “One of our analysts knocks on my door and asks if I have two minutes.” Klopp said. “He made a video to show Sadio how much he contributes to our game and how good he is at the moments, how good he is there and in situations.
“The intention was to show he should not be too worried that the finishing is not there at the moment. He’s still an incredibly important player for us. That is the view we have on him.”
