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Soccer star Sadio Mané beautifully explains his approach to sharing his exceptional wealth

"Why would I want ten Ferraris, 20 diamond watches, or two planes? What will these objects do for me and for the world?"

Dan Sutich/Facebook, Soccer Stories – Oh My Goal/YouTube

Sadio Mané

I don't follow international football (soccer, for us Americans), but a viral Facebook post prompted me to look up pro soccer player Sadio Mané. I'm so glad I did.

In 2020, the then 28-year-old from Senegal played for Liverpool and was widely known as one of the nicest guys in the game. He often helped offload items off the team's bus, treated unsuspecting fans and ballboys with gifts, and even helped scrub toilets at a local mosque after a big game.

He was also known for donating much of his $14 million a year salary as a professional footballer, especially toward helping his home village in Senegal.

The viral post that caught my eye showed Mané carrying a cracked iPhone and included a quote from him explaining his approach to wealth. (The quote was not in response to being asked about the cracked iPhone, but it makes a nice visual).

In a 2019 interview Ghanian newspaper Nsemwoha, Mané said:

"Why would I want ten Ferraris, 20 diamond watches, or two planes? What will these objects do for me and for the world? I was hungry, and I had to work in the field; I survived hard times, played football barefooted, I did not have an education and many other things, but today with what I earn thanks to football, I can help my people. I built schools, a stadium, we provide clothes, shoes, food for people who are in extreme poverty. In addition, I give 70 euros per month to all people in a very poor region of Senegal which contributes to their family economy. I do not need to display luxury cars, luxury homes, trips and even planes. I prefer that my people receive a little of what life has given me"

He's sincere about that. Mané paid for a hospital to be built as well—a project he funded because his father died when Mané was a child because there was no hospital in their village. In the summer of 2019, he also returned to Senegal on vacation to check up on a school he is building in his home village of Bambali.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Mané's attitude toward his wealth and his choice to spend his money to help others are so refreshing. People are free to do what they want with their money, of course, and it's not like Mané never splurges. But he tries to stay humble. In a world with such extremes of poverty and wealth, seeing someone attempt to balance the scales voluntarily does a heart good. Imagine a society where every millionaire or billionaire were as detached from material things and as generous with what they have as Sadio Mané. While individuals aren't responsible for public welfare, imagine the wide range of good they could do nonetheless.

Nearly five years later, Mané's philosophy of sharing his wealth hasn't changed. Now 32, Mané left Liverpool in 2022 to play for Munich, and as of 2024, Mané now plays In Saudi Arabia for Al-Nassr. He was considered one of the world's highest-paid soccer players in 2024 by Forbes, and according to a July 2024 Business Insider profile, Mané continues to give back to his Senegalese community by funding Universal Basic Income in a region affected by extreme poverty.

Thank you, Sadio Mané, for continuing to be such an excellent role model!


This story originally appeared five years ago.

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German soccer fans turned on a racist heckler, punctuating his exit with an anti-Nazi chant

This is how it's done, folks.

Muhammad Lila/Twitter

The Preussen Munster square off against the Würzburger Kickers

As a soccer match between German teams Preussen Munster and Würzburger Kickers went into its final minutes, a defender from the Kickers, 23-year-old Leroy Kwadwo, stopped to point out a problem in the stands.

A Munster fan was making monkey noises at Kwadwo, a black player of Ghanaian descent. It was a clearly racist heckling—an issue that has publicly plagued the international sport in various venues, even as recently as last week. But this time, the response from the crowd far outshined the racist in the stands.


First, the man was quickly identified by his fellow Munster fans and ejected from the game. While stewards escorted him from the stadium, the crowd chanted, "Nazis out! Nazis out!"

Some fans also stood and applauded Kwadwo and the player received supportive pats on the back from opposing team members as well.

This is how it's done, folks.

Kwadwo thanked fans via social media the next day for their "exemplary" reaction, the Associated Press reported:

"I was racially abused by one single spectator. It just makes me sad. I indeed have a different skin color, but I was born here in this wonderful land that has given my family and I so much and made so much possible. I am one of you. I live here and can live my calling as a professional with the Würzburger Kickers.

Something like yesterday just makes me sad and angry because everyone has to know, racism does not belong in OUR world. We all have the opportunity to oppose it and stop it if it happens."

Munster said it would seek to ban the racist fan from all German stadiums for three years, which is the toughest sanction the sport itself can implement. However, the man also faces legal consequences and is being charged with incitement.

"As repulsive as the monkey noises against the player were, the subsequent response from the rest of the spectators were so impressive," the Preussen team said in a statement.

According to CNN, Preussen Munster president Christoph Strasser said of the heckling: "It is not something that belongs on the soccer field and certainly not in our stadium. We don't want and need people like that here. We clearly distance ourselves from such statements and I apologized to the Würzburgers immediately after the game."

If we have to live with nasty racists in our midst, it's at least encouraging to see a huge crowd reject it with such immediacy and fervor. Nazis out, indeed.


This article originally appeared on 3.1.23

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Teacher mispronounces every student's name to get a laugh, but it also serves a bigger purpose

Oddly enough, this kind of silly roll call can make everyone feel equally welcome.

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A teacher mispronounced her students' names, which ironically may have made all of them feel more welcome.

Anyone who has lived in the U.S. with a nontraditionally American name knows how hard it can be to get some people to pronounce your name correctly.

My husband's name is Javad, which is only two syllables and objectively not hard to say (juh-VAHD), but I've watched many people mutilate it over the years even after being given the correct pronunciation. I remember one time watching him introduce himself to a man clearly and slowly—twice—and the man still called him "Bob," like he couldn't even digest this name he'd never heard before, much less pronounce it.

As a kid, at the beginning of every school year or every time a substitute teacher came around, it was common for my husband to have to correct the pronunciation of his name. Not the end of the world, but annoying. I can't imagine how much more annoying it is for people with longer names that aren't familiar to many American ears.

A video of a teacher mispronouncing every student's name has gotten a huge response on Reddit, presumably for the humor of it. The names she reads off the attendance list are ones that are common enough in the U.S. that pronunciation normally wouldn't be an issue—Luke, Jacob and Hunter, for example. But she manages to bungle them anyway—yes, even Luke—and it is genuinely funny.

But saying Luke as "Luck" and Hunter as "Hoonter" did more than just give her students a giggle. It also puts every student on the same playing field. If there were students in her class with less common names that might easily be mispronounced, they now find themselves in the same shoes as all of their classmates. They no longer stand out as "the kid with the name the teacher didn't know how to pronounce."

If every kid has to correct the teacher, then doing so is no big deal. No one is "othered" by it. It's just a funny thing they all do. And it also gives the teacher a chance to hear each kid's name from their own mouth instead of trying to read it off a list without ever hearing it.

The only risk here is accidentally pronouncing an unfamiliar name correctly the first time, but that seems unlikely. And it actually would probably just add another layer of humor to the already light atmosphere. Because a teacher mispronouncing a student's name can have a lasting impact, it's important to do what we can to keep it from happening.

The thing about unfamiliar names is that they usually aren't as hard to pronounce as people make them out to be. They're simply unfamiliar.

I mean, if we can pronounce Beethoven (which doesn't look like it sounds), Tchaikovsky (which has all those consonants) and Dostoyevsky (which has four syllables) without even thinking about it, we can learn to pronounce any name. In fact, Nigerian actress Uzo Aduba illustrated this exact point in a story about how her last name always made her the first kid in roll call and she was concerned that no one knew how to pronounce her name right. Her mother reassured her, "If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka."

It might take some practice, and we might have to ask people's forgiveness if it takes us a while, but it's not impossible.

Some people in the comments on Reddit pointed out that the teacher's roll call was an innovative way of making every student feel equally welcomed in the classroom. But even more said it reminded them of a hilarious Key & Peele skit about a hard-nosed substitute teacher mispronouncing students' names and getting angry when they corrected him.

A bit of a language warning in case you have little ones around, but it's great if you haven't seen it. You'll never see the name "Blake" the same way again.

This story originally appeared on 03.08.22

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People are loving this hilarious video of cheerleaders saving a stuck basketball

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Proof that cheerleading is the ultimate sport.

The true MVP during an NCAA March Madness game wasn’t even a basketball player. Instead, the game was saved by a couple of cheerleaders who quite literally rose to the challenge to save the day.

A hilarious clip sweeping the internet shows a basketball completely stuck between the backboard and shot clock as St. Mary’s College played against Indiana in Portland, Oregon.

Not even the tallest players could jump high enough to retrieve it. A mop didn’t work, a referee on a chair didn’t work. They were quickly running out of ideas.

“Major issues here in Portland,” the announcer chuckled.

I mean, they could have gotten another ball, but where’s the fun in that?

Luckily, inspiration hit!

Cassidy Cerny gracefully hoisted herself onto the shoulders of her teammate Nathan Paris in that effortless “why yes, I’m a cheerleader, I defy gravity all the time” way. Cerny grabbed the ball, the crowd went wild … and the rest is epic sports history.

Cerny and Paris went above and beyond (see what I did there?) to lift spirits. And people were quick to share their praises in the comments.

“It’s amazing how sometimes the most simple and mundane things cac bring people together,” one person wrote.

Another person added “I love moments like these. Proves humanity still exists in people.”

Showing true cheerleader spirit, Cerny told Good Morning America “just being able to bring that exposure to my team was really fun.”

And they say the perfect play doesn’t exist. When are these cheerleaders getting their trophy, already?

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