Mohamed Salah has gone a little off-script over the last fortnight. It started in an interview with BeIN Sports, during which he said that you could compare him with any player in his position at Liverpool or any other club in the world and the only reasonable conclusion could be that he is the best. He makes a perfectly reasonable case (and this is hardly a show of wanton arrogance), but it jars slightly with our image of Salah.
During a press conference on Liverpool’s pre-Champions League final media day on Wednesday, Jurgen Klopp rejected the idea that revenge would play any part in Saturday’s tie against Real Madrid. Salah had already admitted that it formed exactly part of his own motivation. Klopp said the build-up to a showpiece final was not the time to discuss the future of players; a few minutes earlier, Salah revealed – and it was a reveal – that he would be a Liverpool player next season.
The announcement of his short-term future was new information, but also entirely predictable. Of Salah’s three options, leaving Liverpool this summer was always the least preferred. Either he signs a new contract, staying at Anfield for the rest of his peak years, or he leaves at the end of next season, out of contract and therefore able to command higher wages and signing-on fees because there will be no transfer fee.
Salah was in jovial mood throughout this week’s public appearances, but you suspect this is all a deliberate ploy, a fluffing up of an ego ahead of a date that he considers to be his destiny. Salah has played in two Afcon finals, won three league titles and every major cup competition a top-flight player in England can manage.
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He has scored in a Champions League final too. But it does not matter whether anyone else believes this to be the biggest match of his career – he seems to. The 2018 final was a landmark moment and Salah is determined to make amends for the injury, inflicted by Sergio Ramos, which forced him off inside half an hour. It was, he says, the worst moment of his career and something he struggled with for some time.
The longer-term uncertainty over Salah’s future has allowed us to spend this season trying to work out his worth to Liverpool. It has provided no new answers – not really.
Instead, a collection of vague questions that can only provoke half-baked theories: Could Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota fill the void? How quickly does a 29-year-old with almost 600 senior career matches for club and country decline when that decline begins? Does Salah have the tools to reinvent himself again, as he did from winger to elite goalscorer? Is it greedy to demand more money or simply a representation of the confidence you have in your own status?
And, most interestingly and yet most intangible of all, how much of Salah’s brilliance is down to the uniqueness of Liverpool under Klopp and how much of Liverpool’s brilliance under Klopp is down to the uniqueness of Salah? The coaching, the paternal full-time hugs and “my boys” culture, the new training centre, the teammates who service him; it must, does, make a difference. At times, Salah and Sadio Mane appear to operate on a telepathic plane. The set-up and punchline could be delivered on different continents and yet somehow the timing of the line would be delivered perfectly.
But would many – indeed any – other players have scored 44 goals in their debut season like him? Do not underestimate how much that one goalscoring season has shaped Liverpool’s future. Before it, Klopp had not won a trophy for six years and Liverpool the same.
More than any other player, Salah broadened Liverpool’s horizons in 2017-18, changing what anyone believed could be possible and now feels probable. You can see why he might seek another night of European Cup glory to recognise that role.
How much of this is deliberate and how much simply the subconscious drive of an elite sportsperson is also open to interpretation. But we can make a decent stab at a guess: Salah knows that his ability to command the salary he desires depends on Liverpool’s success and his integral role within it.
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He may well know too that Liverpool have played 17 matches without him starting this season, winning 14 and drawing the other three. He has played in nine major finals in his career and his penalty against Tottenham remains his only goal. He now seeks the crowning glory.
If personal fuel exists alongside communal success for Salah on Saturday, the two are clearly not conflicting ideals. If Salah performs at his peak, Liverpool are a better team; that at least is not complicated. If Salah is shackled, as he was through long periods of the 2019 final victory over Tottenham, Liverpool must find another way. None of this is intended as criticism; quite the opposite. He has become a superstar individual in a superstar team.
But it does make for the most fascinating individual strand of the Champions League final. Salah is after revenge while every other Liverpool player busily rejects that notion. Salah is asking to be the highest-paid player in Liverpool’s history and knows that Saturday is the perfect stage on which to reinforce his importance.
So when Jordan Henderson was asked on Wednesday who would be his choice to score the winning goal and he played the game perfectly – “I don’t care as long as we win” – Salah interrupted with a smile: “Hopefully it’s me”. He probably means it.
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