Mamadou Sakho, the Unlikely King of the Kop

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

Late October 2015, Jurgen Klopp's first home game as Liverpool's new gaffer, and the atmosphere is much headier than might normally be expected against Rubin Kazan, a team so random that they actually change their name before the return fixture. It's mightily impressive hearing the Kop holler someone's name with such gusto throughout.

But it's not actually Klopp's name they're hollering – it's Mamadou Sakho's.

Leap forward four months, and after an injury break and a seriously shaky start to his comeback, the French defender is still the club's most chanted-about player. That will probably bewilder the doubters – and there are many. True enough, a few weeks before Klopp's arrival Sakho could reasonably have been written off as a massive (6'2) flop. He'd arrived in 2013 for a hefty £18m, made some high-profile ricks, and often looked a nervous wreck.

So how did Sakho become a hero? And what sort of hero is he, exactly: a genuine heir to Gerrard and Carragher? Or a loveable cult figure, a successor to Igor Biscan and Djimi Traoré?

Igor, a magnificently lugubrious central midfielder, is still warmly recalled at Anfield despite quickly being dismissed as one of the Worst Signings Ever. That image changed when Steven Gerrard was injured during the 2004/05 Champions League campaign and Igor rocked up with some hilariously inspired, bizarrely dominant displays (quite a few Liverpool midfielders suddenly played a lot better when Gerrard was out. You'd almost think he was a pain to play with).

But Sakho is more often compared to Traoré, another leggy Afro-French defender. Poor Djimi became such a figure of fun that one of football's finest chants was composed in his honour, based on Blame it on the Boogie, after a howler at Burnley. "He just can't, he just can't, he just can't control his feet," they sang, with some accuracy.

Traoré became a regular during Liverpool's memorable 2004/05 campaign, however, and there's something romantic about the unlikely success of someone seemingly useless. But Sakho's transformation has been more dramatic. A telling exchange occurred during the 'Who did you wrongly write off as a joke?' round of BBC 5 Live banterfest Fighting Talk in early November, between Liverpool fan Rick Edwards and host Josh Widdicombe:

Edwards: Last time I was on here I had a pop at him, and I'm totally wrong. He's now one of my favourite players.

Widdicombe: [genuinely stunned]: Is he? But he looks so uncomfortable!

Edwards:Yeah he looks uncomfortable. But he's actually brilliant.

That's the thing with fandom in the groupthink era: no grey areas. You're a genius or a joke, a Jamie or a Djimi. Witness the slapstick panto when Sakho was injured, the day after that show aired. Reds worldwide spat venom as replacement Dejan Lovren got stripped. Then Sakho tried to continue, Anfield erupted, until he collapsed again and Lovren skulked on to audible groans. Lovely confidence boost, that.

There's an argument that the 'Sakho!' chant was partly aimed at poor, unpopular Dejan, who cost £20m, proved even more calamitous, but started this season in Sakho's spot. The Croatian has greatly improved too, and won Liverpool's player of the month during Sakho's absence, but certainly isn't enjoying similar cult status. Why?

"In terms of the amount of love Sakho gets, it's probably something to do with him having an aesthetically warrior-like face," says Alfie Brown, a fine stand-up who peppers his sets with LFC references, but probably won't ever be allowed on Fighting Talk. "Extremely dark skin. White imposing eyes. That vivid contrast will make people think, 'Woah: he's gonna stop whatever comes his way.'"

Brown is a big Sakho fan. We were liaising over email about other things when that injury happened, Brown promising to "do something absolutely horrendous to someone" if his cruciate was buggered (it wasn't). To be a proper star at Anfield, "it comes down to personality," he says. "There was an interview recently where Sakho goes, 'I am a Scouser!' I think as soon as he did that, he was pretty much solidly in people's good books. Everyone loved [previous centre-half Daniel] Agger, because Agger had 'YNWA' tattooed on his knuckles."

Another opinionated red, Jamie Holme, is a good guy to quiz about fans and football. Now a marketing bigwig at Twitter and mainstay of the LFC DayTrippers podcast, he was on the books of several pro clubs before the lower leagues beckoned. Sakho fills a psychological void, he reckons.

"He's quite divisive," admits Holme. "But he does have this cult status – it's the way he plays. He seems to care and I think the fans are drawn to that, because we don't really have any characters in our team any more. I think the fans have been trying to clamber towards someone."

Holme has an intriguing theory about centre-halves: they're alpha males or beta males. Sakho is an alpha, "the most dominant: he enjoys being a front-foot defender, engaging with the centre forward, getting a tackle in, being first, aggressive."

Meanwhile Lovren and Liverpool's usual first-choice stopper, Martin Skrtel, are back-foot betas, which is why Lovren was rubbish early on. "When he came in Rodgers called him the leader of his back four," says Holme, "so he's overcompensating, going for headers he would never usually – he tied himself up in knots."

And Sakho's dodgy start? Well, that was probably Rodgers too. Turns out he's actually great on the deck, striding forward, sliding long passes into the strikers, if Liverpool bother picking any. But Brendan was ball-retention obsessed, banning long clearances, which caused panic under pressure, particularly when you've just pitched up from the less intense Ligue 1.

Thing is, Sakho was a folk hero there too, captaining PSG at 17 (the division's youngest ever) and giving an emotional speech on the pitch before leaving. Added to this, it was his play-off brace that took France to the 2014 World Cup. He clearly isn't crap, whatever Josh Widdecombe thinks. In fact, it's tempting to wonder whether the 'Sakho!' chants are a calculated attempt to boost that shaken confidence. Bill Shankly said that the Kop could "suck the ball into the net." Now they're actively helping Sakho to not suck.

"I like the idea: a collective consciousness, getting together for the greater good," ponders Brown, although he reckons they're really just won over by his sheer enthusiasm. "Force of personality. There's something to be said for the fact that Sturridge still hasn't got a song."

And it's worth remembering that both Traoré and Biscan ended up with Champions League winners medals from the 2004/05 campaign. There's something to be said for being a cult hero.

@SiHawkins