Mohamed Salah has given everything to Liverpool and deserves fitting finale

LIVERPOOL — Mohamed Salah‘s intentions were clear. Just 24 hours after Liverpool had ended the 2023-24 season with a third-place finish in the Premier League, the Egypt international took to social media to make a promise to his adoring public.

“We know that trophies are what count and we will do everything possible to make that happen next season,” he wrote. “Our fans deserve it, and we will fight like hell.”

Twelve months later, Salah shared a photograph of himself sitting on the Anfield turf alongside the Premier League trophy and the host of individual accolades he had earned for a truly stunning 2024-25 campaign, where he managed 34 goals and 23 assists in 52 games in all competitions. This time, there was no need for a vow or a rallying cry — the silverware spoke for itself.

The post served as the perfect encapsulation of Salah’s time at Liverpool, which is set to come to an end after the Reds’ final game of the season against Brentford on Sunday. Written off by many following an underwhelming spell at Chelsea, Salah’s enduring brilliance over the past nine years has seen him establish himself among the pantheon of Premier League greats and write his name into the annals of Anfield history.

With 257 Liverpool goals to his name, he sits third on the list of the club’s all-time top scorers behind Ian Rush (346) and Roger Hunt (285); Salah also has more Premier League goal contributions for a single club (283) than anyone in the division’s history and is the only player to have been voted the PFA Players’ Player of the Year on three occasions.

But while the above statistics offer a snapshot of the many records Salah has sent tumbling at Liverpool, his importance on Merseyside extends far beyond any tangible metric. For almost a decade, the forward has been the face of the club — and, more broadly, of Egyptian football — on the world stage.

He has attained icon status in the eyes of his millions of supporters across the globe and created a legacy that will continue to resonate for years to come. Wherever he decides to go after leaving Anfield on a free transfer this summer, Salah’s story will forever be enshrined in football folklore.

But how did a boy from the rural village of Nagrig, Egypt, become one of the sport’s biggest names? Here, ESPN explores his journey to becoming a Liverpool legend.

“Everybody knew he was a special talent”

Salah was not an obvious superstar. He arrived at Liverpool for £36.9 million in 2017 off the back of an impressive season with Serie A side AS Roma, but with the specter of his disappointing two-year stint at Chelsea (where he only made a handful of appearances) hanging over him.

His journey to the top is one of immense sacrifice, with the forward’s teenage years devoted to making the nine-hour round trip to the training base of his first professional club, Al Mokawloon, in Cairo. His first big break arrived in 2012 when, after impressing for Egypt’s under-23 side in a friendly against FC Basel, the Swiss club moved to sign him on a four-year contract

“He seemed to be very shy when he arrived but also very friendly,” Remo Meister, who worked in the communications department at Basel when Salah joined the club, told ESPN. “He was always smiling. We had some very good people at the time — we still do now — but there were some very good people who took care of him, especially in the player-liaison team. After a couple of weeks, we started calling him by the nickname ‘Momo.’

“He only spoke a little bit of English, and so everyone tried to help him. Everybody knew he was a very special talent, and it was a special transfer for us. We knew we could be a good step for him.

“When he played his first games for us, you could see he was very young, but he was incredibly fast. All of the fans were astonished by his speed. He was already a very good footballer but still quite raw. At the beginning, it was not too easy for him to score goals, but he had lots of potential.”

It was that potential that compelled Chelsea to sign him for £11 million in 2014, fending off competition from a host of other European clubs, including Liverpool. However, for all of his promise, Salah made just six starts in his time at Stamford Bridge, with a loan move to Fiorentina in 2015 offering him the chance to reignite his career.

Salah settled quickly in Italy and made an instant impression on manager Vincenzo Montella, who once likened the forward to Barcelona’s Lionel Messi on account of his explosive pace.

“On the second day of training, I told the president that we had signed a top player,” Montella, who is now head coach of the Türkiye national team, told ESPN. “He arrived in January and had never even played at that point. What made him so special was his speed control — that was definitely the first thing. On top of this, the ease of his execution in the last 30 meters.”

Salah continued to excel when he joined Roma in the summer of 2015 and he impressed so much at the Stadio Olimpico that manager Luciano Spalletti once described him as the best player he had coached in his career.

Still, Liverpool’s decision to sign the 25-year-old Salah for £36.9 million was decried in some quarters, with the forward immediately under enormous pressure to shake off his “Chelsea flop” tag.

“It [the fee] seems a lot,” read one article, published on the website of broadcaster TNT Sports, “given the overwhelming impression from Salah’s 19 games for Chelsea of a radio-controlled car whose controller was on the blink — no idea where it’s meant to be going, but rushing there at top speed.”

It was a harsh appraisal. But, while many within the Liverpool fanbase didn’t share those sentiments, nobody could have predicted how spectacularly he would go on to prove his doubters wrong.

“For most signings, I try to be fairly positive and open-minded,” John Gibbons, of The Anfield Wrap, told ESPN. “With Mo, I was obviously aware of the Chelsea thing, but his numbers at Roma were so impressive, you couldn’t help getting a bit excited.

“I don’t think I was punching the sky when we signed him, in the way I was when we signed Fernando Torres or even Fernando Morientes. But I was just like: ‘Right, we’ve got a forward over the line, let’s see how he does.'”

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Nicol: Liverpool cannot succeed if players stop backing Slot

The ESPN FC panel debate whether Liverpool can remain successful under Arne Slot, suggesting that the club will not be able to move forward unless the squad back him.

Part of a goal-scoring trio that made Pep Guardiola “scared”

It took Salah just 57 minutes to make his mark for Liverpool. Less than an hour into his top-flight debut for the club in August 2017, the Egypt international netted against Watford in a 3-3 draw at Vicarage Road.

It set the tone for what would become a truly remarkable individual campaign, during which Salah scored 32 goals to become the highest scorer in a 38-game Premier League season — a record he held until Erling Haaland’s 36-goal haul for Manchester City in 2022-23.

“There’s not much I can say about what he does on the pitch that you guys haven’t already seen and written about,” manager Jurgen Klopp said after Salah was voted the Football Writers’ Association (FWA) Footballer of the Year in 2017.

“The fact you have voted for him as your ‘Player of the Season’ reflects that you have witnessed his incredible quality as a footballer. But it’s his qualities as a person that should not be overlooked … with his teammates and the club staff, he is gentle and humble despite being the international superstar he is now. The attention and acclaim have not changed him even by 0.01%.”

While Salah is often described as an affable character off the pitch, his drive and single-mindedness on it proved integral to Liverpool’s success under Klopp. The forward — alongside teammates Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino — was part of a strike force so prolific that City boss Pep Guardiola admitted he was “scared” of them ahead of a Champions League quarterfinal tie between the two clubs in 2018.

“The forwards of Liverpool are good,” Guardiola told his assistant Carles Planchart. “They scare me. They’re dangerous, I mean it.”

Guardiola’s fears — revealed in City’s ‘All or Nothing’ documentary on Amazon Prime — were quickly realized, as Salah, Mane and Firmino all scored against his side to help secure a 5-1 aggregate victory en route to that season’s final. While Liverpool ultimately missed out on the trophy, with Salah forced off with a shoulder injury in the first half of the Reds’ 3-1 defeat to Real Madrid in Kyiv, it was only the beginning of a golden era for the club.

Over the next four seasons, Liverpool won six trophies, including the Champions League in 2019 and the Premier League in 2020, and re-established themselves as a dominant force in European football. Salah, Mane and Firmino combined to score a staggering 338 goals during their time together, although their synergy on the pitch did not always translate into harmony in the dressing room.

“They were never best friends; each kept himself to himself,” Firmino said of Salah and Mane in his 2023 book, ‘Sí Señor: My Liverpool Years.’ “I never took sides. That’s why they love me: I always passed the ball to both; my preference was for the team’s victory. Many focus on what I brought to the attacking trio in tactical terms, but perhaps just as important was the human element: my role as peacemaker, unifier. If I didn’t do that, it would be nothing but storms between the two of them on the field.”

For all of their individual talent, it was the trio’s collective brilliance that made Liverpool such a threat. At a club where forwards — from Kenny Dalglish to Luis Suárez — have always been revered, the triumvirate of Salah, Mane and Firmino provided a new generation with attacking idols to adore.

“It’s very rare you get a group of players that talented who are greater than the sum of their parts, and that’s credit to all of them,” Gibbons said. “I’ve heard people talk about Firmino being the one who held it together but I think that’s a bit harsh on the other two, even though Bobby was an incredible team player. All of them would help each other, whether that would be through assisting or creating space or even just giving defenders something to think about. All three of them were just relentless.”

December’s flashpoint with Slot was the beginning of the end

Salah’s drive to succeed has been an inspiration to many of his teammates, including Hungary left back Milos Kerkez, who has struck up a close friendship with the Egypt international since joining the club last summer.

“He has so much experience, but what really puts Salah away from everyone else is how professional he is,” Kerkez told ESPN. “He’s unbelievable. I don’t think I’ve seen that in any other player, doing all the gym stuff, eating healthy, how focused he is to make sure he is doing everything to perform well on the pitch. That is really unbelievable. It’s what I have tried to learn from him this year.”

But Salah’s indefatigable determination to be the best has, on occasion, been to his detriment. One such instance came in April 2024 when, after being dropped to the bench for Liverpool’s clash with West Ham United, the forward was involved in a touchline spat with Klopp in full view of the television cameras.

“If I speak, there will be fire,” Salah told reporters as he left the London Stadium, likely aware that even those seven words would ignite an inferno of controversy.

Klopp’s departure at the end of the 2023-24 season prevented any further deterioration of a relationship that has been rehabilitated since the German left Anfield. The arrival of Arne Slot that same summer offered the chance for a fresh perspective, and the Dutchman’s decision to relieve Salah of some of his defensive duties paid dividends last term, with the forward scoring 34 goals in all competitions and propelling Liverpool to another Premier League title.

“I told [Slot]: ‘With me, you are going to win the Premier League, but I have to feel really comfortable with the way we play’,” Salah said after once again being crowned FWA Player of the Year last season. “He was very honest with me, we had a few honest conversations, and he said to me: ‘OK, I will get the best out of you. I will put you in a situation where you feel comfortable, but I need you to provide the numbers’.”

It seemed like the beginning of a fruitful relationship between the pair, though ultimately it has not proved strong enough to survive the turbulence of this disappointing season. Last summer, Liverpool were rocked by the death of striker Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva — a tragedy that seemed to have a profound impact on Salah, who said: “I never thought there would be something that would frighten me of going back to Liverpool after the break” in his emotional tribute on social media.

While the impact of such a devastating loss is unquantifiable, the sight of Salah in tears as fans sang Jota’s name on the opening night of the Premier League season offered a glimpse of the grief that Slot, the Liverpool players and club staff have had to navigate behind the scenes.

On the pitch, Salah’s inability to replicate last season’s staggering output prompted a groundswell of external criticism and led to Slot dropping his star forward to the bench for three consecutive games toward the end of last year.

Following the third of those games — 3-3 draw with newly promoted Leeds United in December — Salah shocked the football world when he stopped in the mixed zone to give an incendiary interview to Norwegian TV, in which he claimed he had been “thrown under the bus” and his relationship with Slot had broken down.

Salah was subsequently suspended from the squad for Liverpool’s Champions League clash with Inter Milan, before returning to action against Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League following what sources described to ESPN as constructive conversations with Slot at the club’s AXA Training Centre.

But, while Salah and Liverpool were able to strike on a short-term truce, it felt inevitable that December’s flashpoint would mark the beginning of the end of the forward’s time at Anfield.

“How can you replace someone like Salah?”

Perhaps it is fitting that one of the most extraordinary Liverpool careers should not end without a dramatic finale. Salah’s social media post last weekend — in which he appeared to take aim at Slot’s playing style by calling for the return of Klopp’s brand of “heavy metal football” at Anfield — has taken up plenty of column inches and broadcast minutes, with everyone keen to have their say on the forward’s controversial parting shot.

While his conduct has divided opinion in the media, Salah’s legacy in the eyes of supporters is rightfully secured. After all, to a generation, Salah is Liverpool Football Club.

He was front and center of the Reds’ revolution under Klopp, with a cultural cachet to rival any sporting superstar. The sight of the forward performing “sujood” [the Islamic act of prostration] after scoring a goal has almost become a customary part of a Liverpool matchday, and yet the impact of his actions cannot be overstated at a time of great social and political unrest.

In 2021, a study in the American Political Science Review determined Salah’s transfer to Liverpool had led to a 16% reduction in hate crimes in the city, as well as reducing Islamophobic online rhetoric. In every sense of the word, Salah is a phenomenon.

“It’s hard to sum up Mo Salah’s impact because it’s been so huge,” Gibbons said. “For a number of years, we were the best team in the world. There’s many people who argue it was the best ever Liverpool team and he was the star of that team. You ask people around the world about Liverpool, it’s Salah they’ll talk about.

“He took the club to another level and that’s really hard to do at one of the biggest clubs in the world. He transcends the sport. How can you replace someone like that? You can’t really. You’ve just got to feel you were fortunate to watch him for all of those years.”

Only time will tell where Salah’s next chapter will take him. Interest from Saudi Arabia remains, although it would not be a surprise to see the forward push to continue his journey on the European stage.

Before then, though, he will be awarded an Anfield farewell for the ages when he steps out against Brentford this weekend. Such a send-off will be no less than he deserves.

“I will give 100% and give everything for the club,” Salah said in his first Liverpool interview back in 2017. “I am happy to be here and I really want to win something for this club.”

It is safe to say that — as he has done so many times during the last nine, storied years — Salah has made good on that promise.