Former Ivory Coast midfielder Yaya Toure has confessed he once asked Manchester City to sign Sadio Mane from Southampton when he was at the club.

Speaking on “Match of the Day Africa: Top 10”, the 40-year-old Toure explained his love for the Senegalese captain and revealed he had seen Mane’s talent before he joined the Reds, and had asked his club to sign him.

“I always wanted to play with him [Mane],” Toure said, adding: “When I was at City, at the time when he was at Southampton, I highly regarded him and I was asking some of my superiors to just sign him. But in the end, it just didn’t happen,

“After that Klopp had the eyes to get him and now look what he did for Liverpool, he was brilliant. I like him, I like him as a player.”

Toure added: “The way he deals with things smoothly and the support he gives back to his people in his country is incredible, with what he’s been involved with. Some days I get mad when I read media about him and a journalist will ask him, ‘Why don’t you have a Ferrari and things’, and he says, ‘No, I don’t need it, I prefer to have a normal car than have a Ferrari’.

“Two months later we see him, he’s been doing things back in his home country, he’s a big example.”

Mane was crucial for Liverpool across six seasons that saw them win the Champions League in 2019 and the Reds’ first-ever Premier League title in 2019-20. He scored 120 goals in 269 appearances for the English side, before making a £35 million move to Bayern Munich in 2022.