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The biggest game of the Premier League season so far is just an hour away and, in Bambali, a village in a remote part of Senegal some 3,000 miles from Anfield, one of Sadio Mane’s cousins claps his hands and declares it is time to eat.



We venture outside, into the sweltering mid-afternoon heat, and are directed towards a shady spot in the yard of the huge mansion that Mane has had built for his extended family. “Around 40 of us live here,” one of his uncles, Ibrahim Toure, says. “Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, grandparents, grandchildren; all the family together. It’s a normal thing in Senegal.”



Another cousin struggles over with a huge vat, plonks it down on the floor and removes the lid, releasing a beautiful smell across the yard. This, he announces, is thiou tiir, a local stew made of fish,...