Jamie Carragher swept into the Mo Salah dispute like a witchfinder general cleansing the Middle Ages of demons and sin. Football’s foremost contract vigilante is incandescent at the nerve of Salah to place himself above Liverpool FC.
To paraphrase the Anfield shop steward, Salah was nothing before he came to Liverpool, let’s be clear about that. He was known as the fella who failed at Chelsea. Liverpool made him what he is, the Egyptian King. How dare he question the manager, how dare he put his interests before those of the club, the custodian of which is Arne Slot?
Welcome to the 21st Century, Jamie, a landscape in which football is not only a sport but premium entertainment, a space where everybody has a value and where star power cracks the whip. And by the way, Salah might point out that the modern Liverpool, the Liverpool of the Premier League epoch, were nothing without him, a club that had not won the title for 30 years before his goals made everything possible.
Carragher is right in purely Corinthian terms. Football’s a team game and all that, and without his teammates there is no “Mo Salah, Mo Salah, running down the wing”.
However, not for nothing is Salah’s legend set to music and anchored in the hearts of the Liverpool fans. It is to him they look to raise the temperature, to make time stand still, to take them to another realm, to make them feel special, to make a difference.
With the greatest of respect, Jamie, you never did that, even though you gave unstinting service to the shirt in your one-club career, an Everton-supporting Liverpool devotee to your core. I introduce the latter dichotomy to highlight the paradox that has trapped both Carragher and Salah at the intersection of romance and business.
Carragher managed to set aside his love of Everton once he joined the enemy, which is a frivolous consideration in abstract terms but in fanland carries weight. Though the equivalence with Salah is stretched, Carra ought still to understand how compartmentalisation works.
Yet he wants Salah to be a fan of Liverpool as well as an employee. This is not how the game proceeds. Salah’s error was to profess his love for the club, a devotion that was always bogus and contract dependent.
There is always a trade between the individual power of the player and the brand power of the club, one expressed in that very contract. And Salah was only exercising the power the club granted him when it made him the highest paid player in the summer.
On arrival Salah absorbed Liverpool’s legacy status. The club put his name in lights. The relationship shifted across the eight record-breaking seasons during which Salah’s goals transformed the fortunes of both and gave him the upper hand.
Salah is that rare earth element, that elusive accelerator which galvanises the whole into something greater and more powerful. Without his goals, Alisson Becker’s saves are easily wasted, just as David de Gea’s countless interventions could not propel Manchester United to title nirvana once Wayne Rooney had left his orbit.
Without Salah’s epic contributions Liverpool would arguably not have won the Premier League and European Cup under Jurgen Klopp nor made Slot a title- winner in his first season.
Salah made Liverpool better and increased the club’s commercial value, allowing Anfield to crank up sponsorship revenues, match day commercial returns and broadcast bounties. Salah more than paid his way in commercial terms.
This does not give him the moral right to strike a blow, of course, especially at a moment of great vulnerability. At the same time this is the consequence of the empowerment facilitated by Liverpool’s desire to retain his services, however batty that might now appear having turned 33 in the summer.
Clearly Salah is miffed, insulted, perplexed by Slot’s decision to bench him during this unexpected unravelling. Salah can never be other than the Egytian King, acceptance of anything less is a decade out of date for him.
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Equally, Carragher was absolutely right. His move was choreographed with his advisors to impart maximum damage. The calculation was timed to coincide with the Africa Cup of Nations and the January transfer window, to alert former suitors in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, to his availability.
This was not the action of a club man, of a player who loves Liverpool above all else. That was always an illusion enabled by the partisan nature of football support, one that requires fans to suspend reality for the land of make-believe.
Carragher’s mistake is to invest in the myth of loyalty. Football for the participants is a business-first endeavour. Sport is simply the context.
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