It is definitely an evening that will leave its mark. The heavy defeat of Bayern Munich on the lawn of Manchester City (3-0), this Tuesday, in the quarter-final first leg of the Champions League, had already had consequences for the French defender Dayot Upamecano, victim of racist insults on the networks. This Thursday, it was striker Sadio Mané, who this time suffered the wrath of his own club for hitting his partner Leroy Sané after the match.
In a press release, the Bavarian club announced that Mané would not be part of the group for the match against Hoffenheim due to his “misconduct” after the match against City. He was also fined.
According to Bild, Sané and Mané first had a heated exchange at the end of the match on the lawn of the Etihad Stadium. And it was back in the locker room that an altercation broke out and Mané hit Sané in the face. The two players were present this Thursday morning for training, Thomas Tuchel taking Sadio Mané aside for a few seconds. Before the training session, Mané had been summoned by Bayern sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic and chairman of the management board Oliver Kahn to explain his action.
This incident between Mané and Sané is one more episode at “FC Hollywood”, Bayern’s nickname for the whims of its stars, in a fairly prolific 2022/23 season.
First there was Serge Gnabry’s little-appreciated escapade at Paris Fashion Week in late January, then in early February the spectacular media outing by injured goalkeeper and captain Manuel Neuer against his managers, whom he blamed the dismissal of goalkeeping coach Toni Tapalovic, close to Neuer. And there was the dismissal to general surprise of coach Julian Nagelsmann, replaced by Thomas Tuchel a few days before a decisive month of April for the season. A week before his dismissal, Nagelsmann had regretted the presence of a “mole” in his locker room after the publication of game plans in the press.
The episode between Mané and Sané also recalls other incidents of the same nature in the Bavarian locker room, Lothar Matthäus and Bixente Lizarazu exchanging slaps in 1999 in front of the cameras, while after the semi-final first leg of the Champions League 2012 against Real, Franck Ribéry was fined after an altercation with Arjen Robben at halftime.
Mané arrived in Bavaria in the summer of 2022 from Liverpool, for a transfer estimated at 32 million euros. He was injured from the beginning of November to the end of February, hit in the right fibula which forced him to give up the 2022 World Cup with Senegal.