Sakho Interview:
"Rodgers manages to get the maximum out of every player," insists the Frenchman. "It’s hugely important and not every coach has that charisma. He must keep all the players interested and each time he calls up a player they respond with a performance. Like I did at West Ham. It’s been four months and I haven’t played with injury. I had the chance to express myself, and I was there. I felt like a lion before the match. It had been four months and I was hungry to come back strongly. The last time Liverpool won the title I was four months old and now I am 24 - I had just been born. Honestly, we will give everything until the last second of the last match."
Sakho's words are a juddering reminder to fans, drunk on the possibility of title success, of just how long Liverpool Football Club has been without the ultimate affirmation of being the best side in the land. The deceptively adroit defender's entire life has passed since the Redmen were last at the pinnacle of the game under Kenny Dalglish and it has been a life spent overcoming socio-economic adversity in order to succeed at the highest level in professional football. Sakho is a winner and a natural leader on the pitch. There is within him a clear-eyed resolve and a ferocious will to succeed. His upbringing and natural aggression are what the player credits for his will to succeed.
"For me it (football) is war and I'm not afraid of anyone," the classy defender avers. "I do boxing in addition to my normal training and I am having my punchbag and boxing kit sent over from France. Before I joined Liverpool I fought at a Paris gym owned by the kickboxing champion Aurelien Duarte and I trained with his cornerman Alex - a crazy Serb. Alex said I have levels of fury he has not seen in some fighters. Before the France-Ukraine game I prepared as though I was going into a boxing ring, intending to tear my opponents apart. I told myself that nobody was going to get past me.
"The fury I had in me that night still remains in me. It could be anger about the way my life has gone. When I was a kid in Paris I used to stand by the ring road and wash car windscreens. I used to take a plastic mineral water bottle with a bit of washing-up liquid and clean car windows with my mates to earn a few coins. I used to play truant a lot as a kid. I was a rebel and it was hard for my parents with six kids to look after."
"Ever since I arrived at the club, since the first month, I said it," he insists. "I told my team-mates that we are capable of winning the title. We have the quality and we just have to believe it. And voila -- as the season progressed we saw Liverpool grow in strength playing such beautiful football. We've not stolen the position where we are today. We deserve to be where we are today."
