The right player, the right club, the right time — goodbye, Mo

I remember where I was when Mohamed Salah scored that goal against Manchester City in October 2021. The one where he picked the ball up deep, drove at the defence, and curled it into the top corner with that trademark left foot as though the whole thing had been rehearsed a thousand times in his back garden. I turned to the person next to me and we just looked at each other. No words. Some players do that to you. They make language feel inadequate.

Now he is leaving. And once again, I find myself lost for words.

The announcement came on Tuesday evening  a sombre video in front of his trophy cabinet, a deep breath, a gulp, and the words none of us wanted to hear. “Unfortunately the time has come. I will be leaving Liverpool at the end of the season.” It was not a surprise. The fractured relationship with Arne Slot, the difficult season, the dropped performances and the signs had been there for months. But knowing something is coming and actually hearing it are two very different things.

From a small village in Egypt to the greatest stages in football

There is something almost cinematic about Mohamed Salah’s story. A boy from Nagrig, a small rural village in Egypt, who rode a bus for hours as a child just to reach football training. Who was told, implicitly or explicitly, that players like him did not make it to the very top. Who went to Basel, then Chelsea  where it did not work  and who might easily have faded away at that point, as so many do.

Instead, he went to Fiorentina on loan, then Roma, and arrived at Anfield in June 2017 for a fee that now looks like the greatest bargain in the club’s history. Jurgen Klopp saw something in him that even Salah himself perhaps did not fully believe yet. Within months, the whole world could see it too.

His first season was simply astonishing  44 goals in 52 appearances, records broken before anyone had quite realised what was happening. The goals against Everton, against Tottenham, against City. The season ended in heartbreak in Kyiv when Sergio Ramos dragged him to the ground in the Champions League final, but Salah came back. He always came back.

The goals, the records, the moments that belong to history

The statistics are staggering. Two hundred and fifty-five goals in 435 appearances, third in Liverpool’s all-time scoring list behind only Ian Rush and Roger Hunt. The only three-time PFA Players’ Player of the Year in the award’s 52-year history. Ten consecutive games scored in  a club record. Twenty or more goals in eight successive seasons, something no Liverpool player has ever managed before.

But statistics, as those who watched him regularly will tell you, only tell a fraction of the story. What the numbers cannot capture is the electricity that ran through Anfield every single time the ball found its way to him on the right flank. The crowd rising in anticipation. The full-back backing off, knowing and yet still powerless to stop what was coming. The drop of the shoulder, the cut inside, and then that left foot  always that left foot  sending the ball into the corner at a pace that goalkeepers could only watch.

He was part of one of the greatest forward lines in Premier League history alongside Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino, each player giving the others space to be brilliant. He won the Champions League, two Premier League titles, the FA Cup, the EFL Cup. He gave this club everything he had, for nine extraordinary years.

A difficult farewell, but a dignified one

This final season has been hard to watch at times. The form that had seemed unbreakable finally broke. The relationship with Slot, described by Salah himself as nonexistent after he was dropped at Leeds in December, became a wound that never fully healed. There were moments of the old magic  that curling finish against Galatasaray in the Champions League, the goals against Brighton  but they were flickers rather than flames.

The death of Diogo Jota in July cast a shadow over everything. Salah stood in front of the Kop after the opening match of the season and wept. The grief was real and raw, and it is impossible to know how heavily it weighed on him throughout a campaign that increasingly seemed to be running away from him. Time, too, was taking its share.

But he asked the club to announce his departure early, wanting to give the fans the chance to say goodbye properly. That is the measure of the man. He will receive the farewell he deserves  not the rushed, misjudged exit that Trent Alexander-Arnold endured, but something closer to the send-off Klopp received. Anfield will have its chance to say thank you.

A love story that Anfield will never forget

“I never imagined how deeply this club, this city, these people would become part of my life,” he said on Tuesday. That feeling, it must be said, runs in both directions.

When the dust of this difficult season finally settles, when the noise and the frustration fade, what will remain is the truth of what Mohamed Salah was for this football club. One of the greatest players ever to wear the shirt. A cultural icon across the Arab world. A man who gave a boy from a small Egyptian village the chance to become a king.

The Egyptian King. Our King. For nine remarkable years — ours.

Records:

255 — third-highest goalscorer in Liverpool’s history, behind only Rush and Hunt

191 — fourth-highest Premier League goalscorer of all time, behind Shearer, Kane and Rooney

189 — most Premier League goals ever scored for Liverpool

281 — most goal involvements for a single club in Premier League history

278 — of those 281 goal involvements came for Liverpool alone

152 — most left-footed Premier League goals ever scored

152 —Most Premier League goal involvements at a single stadium (Anfield)

107 — Premier League goals at Anfield, part of 152 total direct contributions at his home ground

92 — Premier League assists for Liverpool, level with Steven Gerrard and counting

82 — most European appearances ever made for Liverpool, surpassing Carragher’s 80

50 — first African player to score 50 Champions League goals

47 — most goal contributions in a single 38-game Premier League season

19 — most Premier League goals scored against any one opponent, against Manchester United

6 — most seasons with 10 or more goals and 10 or more Premier League assists

4 — joint-most Premier League Golden Boots ever won

3 — only player in history to win the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award three times

3 — only player to win the Premier League Player of the Season, Golden Boot and Golden Playmaker in the same campaign

6 mins 12 secs — fastest hat-trick in Champions League history, against Rangers in 2022