Mohamed Salah to leave Liverpool: a career of brilliance and controversy

Mohamed Salah loves to hear stories about Steven Gerrard and Sir Kenny Dalglish from Liverpool fans who work at the training ground. He can recite his predecessors’ numbers and achievements, having spent the past nine years in pursuit of both, but what really captivates him are tales of how they became legends in the eyes of the Kop. Salah has always longed to be in that company. While that makes his recent public criticisms all the more unfortunate, it does not diminish his phenomenal achievement in reaching that goal.

There is acrimony at the end of Salah’s Liverpool career, as there was a degree of antipathy at the start. He will be celebrated for the relentless brilliance in between.

A Chelsea failure who had rebuilt his career “only” in Serie A, it is amusing to recall the lukewarm reception to the announcement on Friday 23 June 2017 that Liverpool had completed the club-record signing of Salah for £36.9m from Roma. Jürgen Klopp’s welcome message, however, contained a few clues into the character that would forge one of the greatest of all Liverpool careers.

“His pace is incredible, he gives us more attacking threat and we are already strong in this area,” said the Liverpool manager. So far, so standard for a new arrival. But Klopp, who had trusted the data analysts who pushed Salah’s claims over his German contacts who vouched for Bayer Leverkusen’s Julian Brandt, continued: “Most important, though, for us, is that he is hungry, willing and eager to be even better and improve further. He is an ambitious player who wants to win and win at the highest level; he knows he can fulfil those ambitions with Liverpool.”

As Salah prepares to take his leave from Liverpool after 257 goals, 441 appearances, eight major honours and numerous rewrites of the record books, he does so secure in the knowledge he could not have given any more to realise Klopp’s mission statement. He will depart with legendary status assured at Anfield and as a global star. And still, one month shy of his 34th birthday, possessing the hunger and ambition that set him apart from the outset. Which, of course, is one of the main reasons Salah is leaving Liverpool 12 months before his contract is due to expire and on a sour note.

The greats rarely exit smoothly or with gratitude for the manager with the unenviable task of telling them their time is up. But at least Gerrard and Dalglish kept their counsel while they remained Liverpool employees. Salah is adamant he has more to give at the highest level and that he was unfairly scapegoated for Liverpool’s dismal season when dropped for three games by Arne Slot late last year. Being benched for both legs of the Champions League quarter-final defeat by Paris Saint-Germain will be considered a further insult.

The third-highest goalscorer in Liverpool’s illustrious history has made his feelings clear with three public attempts to undermine Slot in the past six months, the latest over his style of play and the team “crumbling” to another defeat, at Aston Villa. It is an unnecessary ending but does not alter the belief that Salah, Slot and Liverpool have arrived at the right conclusion. The forward’s pace is on the wane and he is not programmed to accept a diminished role. The head coach needs more energy in the final third and work off the ball. The club will not have to pay the remainder of a contract that could have cost them up to £26m. It is the right call to go their separate ways.

Parting shots should have waited. Salah’s emotional farewell to Anfield on Sunday should be a moment to salute a fierce competitor who pushed himself into Liverpool’s hall of fame, an essential part of one of the club’s finest teams and forward lines, and the almost unstoppable force who propelled Slot’s side to a record‑equalling 20th league title 13 months ago.

His impact was instant and remarkably consistent, and would help change his and Liverpool’s fortunes. Salah scored on his Premier League debut for Liverpool, as he would on the opening day of eight of his nine seasons with the club. By the end of his first campaign the Egypt international had 44 goals, the first of four Premier League Golden Boots and the first in a hat-trick of clean sweeps of the Professional Footballers’ Association and Football Writers’ Association player of the year awards. It is testament to Salah’s longevity that those accolades were spread over a seven-year period. As are goals‑per‑season numbers of 44, 27, 23, 31, 31, 30, 25 and 34, before this campaign’s steep decline to 12 with one game, at home to Brentford, to come on Sunday.

Liverpool’s hopes have been regularly pinned to Salah for nine years. For the moments when the Premier League title felt destined for Anfield – the 90th-minute clincher against Manchester United in January 2020 and completing the comeback against Brighton in November 2024 – it was the team’s No 11 who led the way. The massed groan from Liverpool fans when he left the 2018 Champions League final in tears as a result of Sergio Ramos’s MMA manoeuvre was the flipside of the expectation he carried. A year later Salah sent Liverpool on their way to a sixth European Cup/Champions League triumph in Madrid. He has shaped much of the club’s recent history.

That Kyiv 2018 final was an early demonstration of how, unlike many players under a global spotlight, Salah’s brushes with controversy are entwined with the game itself. He is devoted to his family, his religion and his sport, and has little time for anything else. Yes, he played Liverpool during contract negotiations and used rare appearances in front of the media to strengthen his hand. It is only this season that he was unable to give full value for good money.

There were fallings-out with Klopp as well as Slot when he was omitted from the starting lineup or substituted without an injury; the angry reactions of a player dedicated to winning for Liverpool and unable to accept anything less. His outburst at Leeds in December can be viewed in that context, if we are being generous. First and last in the gym, with extra shooting practice in between, swimming at midnight and almost always available throughout an intense career at the highest level, Salah has maintained and pushed standards.

Despite the seriousness of his approach to the game, Salah can be lighthearted around the training ground and good fun with a self-deprecating sense of humour. He was profoundly affected by Diogo Jota’s death last July and the grief he displayed in front of the Kop after the first home game of the season against Bournemouth the following month did not surprise anyone at the club.

His humanitarian instincts also prompted the video message he released in 2023 that called for an end to the massacres in Gaza and for aid to be allowed in. As one of the highest-profile Muslim sportsmen on the planet, Salah knows the power of his voice. When Uefa paid tribute to Suleiman al-Obeid last year but failed to mention the “Palestinian Pelé” had been killed in an Israeli attack while waiting for humanitarian aid, Salah responded with: “Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?” His decision to carefully call out European football’s governing body received widespread support.

Salah has a reach and status that few in the game can equal. One social media post demanding the return of heavy-metal football is enough to generate headlines worldwide and dominate the final week of an exhausting season for Liverpool. But, as Gerrard and Dalglish can testify, time waits for no one. There will be consolation for Salah once the resentment over his final season has subsided and cooler heads have returned. One day a player will sit down at Liverpool’s training ground and ask what he has to do to join the club’s all-time greats, and he will listen to tales about “the Egyptian King”.