Mohamed Salah has snubbed the riches on offer in the Saudi Pro League in order to stay at Liverpool, with the Reds announcing his new two-year deal on Friday morning
‘More in than out’ was how Liverpool put it when the news was announced, referencing Mo Salah’s now infamous seeking out of Merseyside journalists after a win at Southampton in November, when he said he was ‘more out than in’. Clearly everyone can laugh about it now.
For a while that wasn’t the case though, as the contract standoff which has surrounded the Premier League season’s outstanding player dragged on and on, although somewhat remarkably never really to the detriment of Salah or Liverpool’s performances, until recently at least.
And the key man behind that is the first reason Salah has rejected the opportunity to make what BBC Sport estimate would be a £500m fortune by moving to Saudi Arabia this summer. Reason No.1 behind Salah staying put: Arne Slot.
Slot’s sensationally smooth transition
You are bound to read more about this should Liverpool do as everyone expects and lift the Premier League title, but the manner in which Slot has taken to the job he inherited from Jurgen Klopp really has been quite remarkable. Ducks will tell their offspring about it when they first introduce them to water.
So, so much could have gone wrong with the appointment of this calm, relatively mild-mannered Dutchman with none of Klopp’s track record or one-liners, but Slot already looks like he’s been at Liverpool for years, and he’s on the cusp of guiding the Reds to just a second league title in three-and-a-half decades.
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Head back to last summer and there was understandable concern about just how Slot would do stepping into the shoes of an icon, and given that there was even more upheaval behind the scenes with the appointment of Richard Hughes as sporting director and return of Michael Edwards as FSG’s head of football, the contract situations of Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold were about to be played out in uncertain times.
All three players, and indeed everyone else from the rest of the squad to the worldwide fanbase, were well within their rights to wait to pass judgement on just what the post-Klopp era would look like, but Salah in particular has been hugely impressed by Slot.
Both the Reds’ forward and his agent Ramy Abbas Issa – whose previous Twitter post before Friday morning hailed the Dutchman for being ‘excellent at his job‘ – like what they have seen, and given the ‘fire’ of how things ended under Klopp, that has been crucial.
Staying at the top of the game
All of which brings us to Reason No.2: Success, and what comes with it. In his post-contract interview Salah might have been at pains to point out that to him team awards are more important than individual ones like, oh, let’s say the Ballon d’Or, but for a large period of this season the Egyptian has been among the front-runners to claim that coveted solo prize, and he’s still fourth in the betting.
Frankly that just isn’t happening if he’s playing in the Saudi Pro League, and nor would he have the amount of eyes upon him that he’s got used to at the summit of the Premier League and European game.
Sure Salah wants to score goals and wants to win games, but he wants you to get on him while he’s doing it, and as a not-quite-33-year-old in remarkable physical condition, there is no better place to do that than in the Premier League. Saudi may still be in his future one day, but former team-mates Jordan Henderson, Gini Wijnaldum, Roberto Firmino, Fabinho and Sadio Mane could tell him all about moving there too early.
Relentless record breaker
Wherever Salah goes, goalscoring records tumble, and Reason No.3 for his decision to stay at Liverpool is simply this: There are more worlds left to conquer. This incredible season has already seen Salah, with 243 goals, rise to third in Liverpool’s all-time top scorer list. No.1 Ian Rush might be uncatchable on 346, but don’t tell Salah that. No.2 Roger Hunt is 42 away on 285, and that will be the next aim.
In the Premier League list he’s joint-fifth with Sergio Aguero on 184, meaning his next goal will make him the highest scoring foreign player to ever play in the division. Andy Cole (187) is then catchable this season, and he’ll have his eye on getting past Wayne Rooney (208) and Harry Kane (213) in 2025-26.
There will be a whole host of other records in his mind’s eye too, for he knows all about them and he knows when he’s near them. His decision to stay at Liverpool means record books are going to have to keep on being rewritten, and he’ll be in them more than he’s out of them too.
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