When Mohamed Salah posts on social media, people tend to listen. And when the Liverpool forward takes part in interviews, his words carry even further.
Amid the context of his Anfield contract now having under eight months left to run on it, Salah’s words are being analyzed more than ever before. Given he has already hit 10 goals and 10 assists this season for Liverpool, that should not be a huge surprise; his influence and importance has always been clear and is showing no signs of waning.
It has never been made public — for obvious reasons — exactly what Salah and his representatives are demanding in terms of a salary or contract length. Indeed, his agent, Ramy Abbas Issa, has made it known several times that anyone who claims to have inside info is bluffing.
What we can reasonably deduce from everything that Salah is saying, though, is that he is perfectly content on Merseyside. His family is settled off the pitch, and on it he continues to break records and climb goalscoring charts.
When he spoke about his September trip to Old Trafford potentially being his last, Salah was simply putting the ball in Liverpool’s court when it comes to negotiations. As it stands, it remains a fact that — unless the Reds face Manchester United in the Carabao Cup semi-finals or are drawn away to the Red Devils in the FA Cup — that will have been his last visit in a Liverpool shirt.
There is still time for that to change, however. And everything that Salah is saying appears to suggest that he wants to remain put. There is interest from elsewhere — Saudi Arabia, yes, but plenty more European clubs would surely make a move if he was to be made available on a free transfer next summer — but no sign really that the Egyptian wants to depart.
“The thing I appreciate the most is the time when I go every morning, and I see the guys, and we share unbelievable moments,” Salah said this week, speaking alongside teammates Alisson Becker and Andy Robertson for the YouTube show The Reds Roundtable. “Especially us three plus Virgil [van Dijk] and Trent [Alexander-Arnold], the senior group.
“When Bobby [Firmino] left, for example, you just realized that everybody will leave one day. I don’t take that for granted. When I go there, I always try to have a laugh with them and just spend good time together. In my head, I always remember the good things we had together, or even the bad stuff.
“Not the worst stuff, but like the failure in the Champions League [final] for example. It’s a bad memory for us but it’s still like something; it’s not easy to reach a Champions League final. So the whole journey was good. You had bad luck in the final, that’s it.”
This was not a man speaking anything but the heart-warming honest truth. And those are not the words of someone who wants this season to be his last at Liverpool: he is clearly embracing every moment.
“When I see the guys, especially the senior group, it just gives me a good memory all the time,” Salah continued. “I believed inside me: ‘[The bad period is] not going to stay like this forever. It’s just a situation, it’s going to pass for sure’.
“And every day — I mean it, every day — every day I’m in the AXA, I don’t think, I enjoy it a lot. Because you’re going to look back and you look at the players that left, I don’t know if they enjoyed it or not. But my time here, I’m enjoying every second of it. I just want to look back to my career and say, ‘I enjoyed everything’.”
As Jordan Henderson and others have found out to their cost, moves away are no guarantee of happiness. Henderson has found that eventually, of course, in the Netherlands — but only in a second-tier competition.
If Salah wants to stay, Liverpool should have no hesitation in facilitating that given the form that he is in at the moment. And Arne Slot, it would appear, is in agreement. “It’s special that he scores so many goals already,” the Reds boss said last week.
“What makes it even more impressive is that he does this year after year after year. Not many players are able to do that and that he is able to do this tells you a lot about the quality he has.”
With that being the case and it seeming obvious that Salah would like to stay, it should be possible for a compromise in potential contract talks to emerge. Losing its star man would be silly from Liverpool, but even sillier from Salah himself to move elsewhere.
