Mane had an excellent first season but it was cut short by injuries. The next season and the first half of 18-19 he spent a lot in Salah's shadow, was still good of course but from 2019 onwards is really when he's truly been one of the best in the league.
When comparing players, of course longevity has to be a part of it. You talk of Kewell and Pires but Giggs was in PFA teams of the year way before and way after their peaks. Greatness is achieved through trophies, performances and longevity. This is why people speak of Giggs so highly.
You speak of Giggs as if Sir Alex was treating him as a charity case. He was here for so long because he merited it and played at a very high level until around 2011. Him changing position also speaks to his greatness. In 2005 we let Keane go and lost Scholes to an eye injury for the whole season. Giggs comes in to play CM alongside O'Shea and was excellent in leading us back on track. Our dominance from 2006/07 onwards doesn't happen without Giggs and Scholes. Rooney and Ronaldo scored but Giggs created so much for the team with 17 assists. He was one of the reasons why this team has so many trophies over his 20 year career.
You are seriously underestimating Giggs' impact on the team and his legacy. He has the most assists in PL history and third in CL history behind the GOAT pairing Messi and Ronaldo. Yes his highest points might have not been enough to win him a Ballon D'or or be in the running for it but what he's been able to do over his career is so impressive because of how hard it is to replicate.
Mane will need a lot more than what he currently has to be in a conversation with Giggs.
Longevity is certainly a key part of player comparison, but only to an extent. A player needs to play well for long enough for us to establish it as a lev for them. Otherwise, we’d be calling players GOATS off the back of a good month. That said, once a player has held a peak level for a few years - it is enough, for me anyway. What Giggs has done is mighty impressive, but a player is not required to play for 20 years in order to be a great. There are many greater players than Giggs who played at the top for a lot less time, and there are greater players than Giggs today who had established themselves as greater than him years ago, and they haven’t even retired yet. This is why I think it is important to not attach too much of his greatness
because of his longevity. His longevity is to be praised separately.
I do realise that my previous post did seem to downplay Giggs slightly, so I retract some of that. I didn’t mean that Giggs was a charity case, nor was Fergie or anyone else who hung arou for that long. But the conditions were unique and different to any most other clubs. Giggs performed over 20 years, on and off, but the conditions to play yourself in and out of form for years were not enjoyed by other players. The manager himself never changed, so there was no added pressure of proving yourself to different men. But most importantly, other players move, for various reasons. They might start off lower and need a couple of moves to make it to a top club. They might want different experiences. All of these moves present a set of challenges that Giggs didn’t face. Which if course is no fault of his own, but that was all I meant previously, and I think is a factor in the conversation of longevity. Maybe if Leeds were not relegated, O’Leary stayed for 20 years, and Kewell didn’t bother to ever leave and try a different environment - he’d have had a lot more seasons like the ones he had just before he left. Pires had to wait until 26 to join Arsenal, and didn’t retire there either. In the time he was in the PL, he was at the very least Giggs’ equal. The whole 20 years thing is a bit of a red herring in these particular discussions I think. Peak level is far more important, as long as we’re not talking about a good 6 months or anything ridiculous like that.
As for Mané needing ‘a lot more than what he currently is to be in a conversation with Giggs’ - how much better does he need to get? It is admittedly a shorter sample, but he’s been a better player than Giggs was for two years I think. I don’t think he needs to do it for 20. Giggs didn’t do that for 20. He just played football at the top for 20. If that is what we are counting, Mane has been an impressive player, consistently, since he came to England with Southampton (and probably before). This right now is a peak for him, but he was playing well before, and Giggs has had seasons that were not as good as seasons Mané has turned out for Southampton himself. He hasn’t had seasons as good as what Mané is doing currently. So the implication would be that Giggs’ longevity is at 20 years, and Mané is at about 2 - which would suggest that Giggs was brilliant for 20 years and that Mané was rubbish before the last couple. Neither are true.
I’m more interested in comparing player’s best form with each others. Providing there is enough of a sample to draw. That is football. I never understand why people want to always get into a ‘bottom level’ debate. It’s not that relevant. Why would you take two great players and rank them based on who can outdo the other when they both decide to be shit, when the purpose of the comparison is because they both happen to be good?
come on, you gotta find a better example than that.