Mo Salah was a Chelsea flop who transformed Liverpool into winning machine and legend is now a global superstar
If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.
A well known mantra that’s become synonymous with the career of Mohamed Salah – and also Liverpool’s journey with the player.
Salah calls time on a glittering nine-year spell at Anfield at the end of the season, the player making the sudden announcement on Tuesday evening.
Despite questionable form this season, he leaves a club legend and an icon of the Premier League era.
His record speaks for himself – two Premier League titles, two Carabao Cups and FA Cup and Champions League winners’ medals to boast.
Not to mention the plethora of individual achievements and accolades Salah possesses. He holds a record three PFA Player’s Player of the Year awards and the 255 goals he’s scored so far for Liverpool helped him scoop a staggering four Premier League Golden Boots.
These achievements weren’t foreseen in 2016 when Salah’s nightmare at Chelsea was brought to an end.
After turning down Liverpool in January 2014, Salah cut an anonymous figure at Stamford Bridge having scored just twice for them – a wild shot at Shrewsbury Town which ended up straying out of play for a throw-in summing up his Chelsea career.
Italian Job
The Salah rebuild started while he was at Chelsea, except the Blues never felt the benefits of it as he showed what he was all about on loan in Italy.
Just over a year after his switch to west London, Fiorentina agreed to take Salah on an 18-month loan.
In a sign of things to come, Salah popped up with important goals for the Florence-based outfit, including in a Europa League victory over Tottenham Hotspur as well as decisive strikes against Juventus and Inter Milan.
Salah was finally getting the love his talent deserved, but he unexpectedly turned down a permanent move offer from Fiorentina and subsequently cut short the loan switch to join Roma instead.
Perhaps Fiorentina have Salah’s former teammate Micah Richards to blame, as he later said: “Honestly, there’s an interview where I say this player is too good for Fiorentina, we shouldn’t have him.
“He [Salah] came there on loan and I just knew how special he was. His touch, his technique, how selfish he was in front of goal.
“We went to Juventus in the Coppa Italia and he ran for 40 or 50 yards against some of the best defenders in the league at the time, I just knew he was special.”
Fiorentina’s loss was Roma’s gain as Salah continued to show why there was such a fuss about him in the first place.
Salah’s first season in the Italian capital saw him win the club’s Player of the Year award and a stop-start 2016/17 season ended with Salah registering 19 goals as he helped Roma to a second place finish in Serie A.
Return of the King
That was still enough for Anfield to come calling, with Jurgen Klopp welcoming the player back to the Premier League in the summer of 2017.
It’s since emerged that Klopp needed persuading from Liverpool’s analytics team, who insisted Salah was the best young attacking player available in Europe with the legendary ex-Reds boss initially favouring a switch for fellow German Julian Brandt.
The decision to go with Salah was instantly vindicated. He scored an incredible 44 goals in all competitions in his first season as he formed a devastating partnership with fellow forwards Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino.
The 2017/18 season saw Salah claim the first of his Golden Boot and PFA Player of the Year awards as the building of Liverpool into a winning machine continued to progress.
Salah’s impact was felt off the pitch too with suggestions some of the Egyptian people spoiled their ballots to vote for Salah as their next president during the 2018 general election.
Meanwhile, a study by Stanford University suggests Salah may have been responsible for a drop in Islamophobia in Liverpool, with anti-Muslim hate crimes dropping by 18.9 per cent between June 2017 and June 2019.
In 2019, he was named in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world and he’s used that platform to call for a change to the way women are treated in the Middle East.
Never Give Up
Everything Salah touched turned to goals but his first season at Anfield wasn’t without its major setbacks.
The end of the campaign saw Liverpool suffer heart-breaking defeat to Real Madrid in the Champions League final, a match Salah of course started… but didn’t finish.
Salah’s emotional exit was shrouded in controversy with then-Real Madrid captain Sergio Ramos’ bizarre wrestling of Salah resulting in Liverpool’s star player spraining ligaments in his left shoulder.
Liverpool lost the final to their more streetwise opponents and Salah’s injury meant his summer was ruined.
He somehow managed to make two appearances at the World Cup but with Egypt building their team around an injured Salah it meant their campaign in Russia ended in the group stage with a whimper.
Salah’s second season at Liverpool was more of a reality check on a personal level. He wasn’t as prolific as before having gone eight matches without a goal at one point.
A return of 27 goals in all competitions was still great going all things considered.
But things were really happening for a Liverpool side who, following a summer transfer splurge, became a side that went toe-to-toe with Pep Guardiola’s formidable Manchester City side.
The domestic campaign once again ended in heartache as Liverpool were pipped to the Premier League by City despite amassing 97 points – a tally that would’ve been enough to win the league in all-but three seasons in the competition’s 34-year history.
Klopp’s men got their glory weeks later as they won the Champions League, beating Spurs in a largely mundane Madrid final.
The main flashpoint of Liverpool’s journey to no.6 came in the semis thanks to a monumental comeback triumph over Barcelona with Liverpool’s 4-0 win at Anfield securing a 4-3 win on aggregate.
Concussion sustained during Liverpool’s previous match prevented Salah from playing on that magical Merseyside night but his black t-shirt donning the words, ‘Never Give Up’ arguably stole the show.
The Champions League title spring-boarded Liverpool to a first ever Premier League title the following season, ending the club’s 30-year wait to become English champions.
Six-pack Salah
More trophies followed for Liverpool, who won the league last season and were two games away from an unprecedented quadruple in 2021/22.
Liverpool had a couple of lean seasons in the second half of Klopp’s reign, but Salah being a player the team could lean on remained a constant.
Goals continued to fly in, 16 of them coming against Liverpool’s arch-rivals Manchester United – making him the record goalscorer in the fixture.
Still, he was criminally underrated on the world stage. How he never registered a top three finish in the Ballon d’Or rankings will forever leave Liverpool fans scratching their heads.
Salah’s meticulous conditioning of his body including intense gym workouts at home or at Liverpool’s Kirkby training base coupled with a strict food regime which even consists of bread being a banned food undoubtedly helped him compete at the top well into his 30s.
Post-Klopp Salah
Klopp remarked on the BBC’s Never Give Up documentary about Salah that the player would come back to every pre-season with a new skill mastered.
And after Klopp’s depature in 2024, it was his successor in Arne Slot who reaped the benefits of Salah’s insatiable appetite to continue evolving his game.
As well as banging in 34 goals in all competitions, assists were added to his game with the player supplying Liverpool teammates on 23 occasions last term.
This season has been unfamiliar territory for Salah. A lack of goals (ten in all competitions so far), a lack of impact and a lack of minutes culminated in a public falling out with the current Liverpool head coach.
Salah alienated himself from some sections of Liverpool fans in the wake of the incident, and there will be inquests over whether Salah opting to leave a year before his contract was due to expire was down to a complete breakdown in the relationship with the powers that be.
But once that dust settles, Salah will be remembered as the Egyptian King who spearheaded Liverpool’s journey back to the top and will forever be a club legend.
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