Sadio Mane, a legend of Liverpool, has already “put his hand in his pocket” and agreed to a takeover proposal to purchase the club.

The forward spent six years at Liverpool and won six major championships.

Sadio Mane has set a target date of 2030 for Bourges Foot 18 to achieve promotion to Ligue 1, after taking over the fourth-tier side.

News broke earlier in the week that the Liverpool legend had been in talks with semi-pro outfit Bourges, with the takeover becoming official on Wednesday.

Speaking in a video statement at a press conference, Mane said: “We’ve been working with the city for the past three years.

“We’re here to nurture and organise the club.

“The challenge is immense, but if the people of Bourges remain involved, I’m confident we can achieve our goals. I believe I’ll be visiting Bourges very soon.”

Meanwhile, Cheikh Sylla, who will stay on as club president, told L’Equipe that Mane has ‘ambitious’ plans for the future.

He is quoted as saying: “We are obviously changing dimension now that he is here, but we want to go at our own pace. The main objective remains to maintain ourselves in National 2 this season (13th out of 14 with one victory in 7 matches).

If we succeed, we will set an ambitious budget, among the best in National 2, to move up. In the end, we are aiming for Ligue 2 by 2030, we don’t look any further than that.

And today, we have laid the foundations for the professionalisation of the club.”

He later added that there will be a focus on developing young Senegalese talent, while insisting that Mane is “also not coming to invest millions at a loss.”

Though he never played for Bourges, Mane began his European footballing career in France, when he joined Metz back in 2011.

The 2022 Ballon d’Or runner up left for Red Bull Salzburg a year later and went on to become a Liverpool legend after arriving as the first big-money signing of the Jurgen Klopp era, in a £30m move from Southampton in 2016.

Now 31, Mane scored 120 times for the Reds playing a major part in the club’s historic 2019 Champions League and 2020 Premier League successes.

READ MORE STORIES:

Chelsea news as the Blues have been issued a warning after the Toffees were sent into the relegation zone this afternoon.

Chelsea and Manchester City have both been sent a warning by the Premier League about potential sanctions they could face after Everton were hit with a 10-point deduction.

The Toffees were found guilty of breaching Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules, with the punishment seeing them drop from 14th in the table down into the relegation zone to 19th, level on points with bottom-of-the-table Burnley.

A statement from the league read: “An independent Commission has imposed an immediate deduction of 10 points on Everton FC for a breach of the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSRs).

“The Premier League issued a complaint against the Club and referred the case to an independent Commission earlier this year.

During the proceedings, the Club admitted it was in breach of the PSRs for the period ending Season 2021/22 but the extent of the breach remained in dispute.

“Following a five-day hearing last month, the Commission determined that Everton FC’s PSR Calculation for the relevant period resulted in a loss of £124.5million, as contended by the Premier League, which exceeded the threshold of £105million permitted under the PSRs.

The Commission concluded that a sporting sanction in the form of a 10-point deduction should be imposed.”

Everton’s financial losses of £372million over the last three years is more than £250million above what the Premier League’s guidelines allows clubs to lose, but many believe their breaking of rule would be less severe than both the Blues and City.

A recent investigation into alleged payments made by Chelsea while former owner Roman Abramovich was still in charge has turned up ‘offshore vehicles’ being used to route payments that favoured the club unbeknownst to regulators or governing bodies.

The Russian billionaire, who was forced to sell the club last year after sanctions imposed on him by the UK government following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is believed to be the owner of those accounts, with the 57-year-old also reportedly involved in further rule breaches in the acquisition of Willian and Samuel Eto’o back in 2013.

Pep Guardiola’s side are already under investigation for 115 alleged breaches of FFP from a period starting in 2009 until 2018, with many fans feeling that the Premier League’s approach to their case in comparison to Everton’s is showing signs of favouritism towards the bigger clubs.

Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher believes Everton’s punishment is harsh after comparison with the clubs who attempted to form the European Super League.

On his social media account, he wrote: “Would it have been better to be evasive & try & drag it out like other clubs?

No doubt relegated clubs will have put big pressure on the PL to deal with Everton, but when you consider 6 clubs tried to leave the PL & there was no sanction at all it doesn’t feel right.”

However, Carragher could be getting his wish as a few paragraphs in the document released this afternoon make for interesting reading.

In the report issued by the Premier League, they mention that any club found to breach the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) would face a proportionate penalty to any individual case, meaning both clubs could face differing sanctions to both each other and Everton if it was found necessary.

The point in the document reads: “We also recognise that the inference of a sporting advantage is one that should properly be drawn from the fact of a PSR breach, and that sporting advantage will have been enjoyed for each of the seasons on which the PSR calculation was based – in this case, because of Covid, four seasons.

“Determination of the appropriate sanction will always involve consideration of the facts and circumstances of the PSR breach, but it is inevitable that when assessing the sanction the need for punishment will be at the forefront of the Commission’s considerations.

The Commission recognises that one of the purposes of a sanction is to provide a deterrent effect.

“That is a legitimate purpose of the sanction. That would not, however, justify the imposition of a penalty that was disproportionate to the extent of the wrongdoing in any individual case.

We also recognise the need to protect the integrity of what is such an important sport – although we consider that some of the observations made in Bolton have greater resonance when dealing with membership of a professional body than with the operation of a regulated sport.”

Essentially, it means that the Premier League are outlining the potential use of punishments against Man City and Chelsea to such a degree that no club would want to commit the same acts in the future.

They are, however, keeping themselves in check by highlighting that while the integrity of the sport is paramount, the use of a penalty against a club must be fair and relative to the size of the club and the size of the breach.