Salah next? Failed farewells feature Ronaldo, Liverpool legend and Arsenal icon’s ‘worst moment’ | OneFootball

Mo Salah might yet challenge for the worst Liverpool farewell tour ever, with Arsenal and Manchester United icons also signing off on a low.

Since Salah announced his planned departure from Liverpool this summer, the Egyptian has been benched for both legs of the Champions League quarter-final defeat to Paris Saint-Germain and put in a risible performance in his last FA Cup game – a 4-0 thrashing by Manchester City.

He is one goalless Merseyside derby draw and red card as a substitute against Manchester United away from having perhaps the worst goodbye in Liverpool history. He has these failed farewells to beat.

Petr Cech

It felt like the perfect time. Arsenal were in the Europa League and FA Cup, chasing Champions League qualification in the Premier League, when Cech announced his impending retirement in January 2019.

The 37-year-old would have ample opportunity to add to his 14 trophies and, as the first-choice keeper in cup competitions, the ability to write a perfect ending to his own remarkable story.

He might have already traded notes with Kepa Arrizabalaga on how well that idea can go in practice.

Arsenal fell by the wayside in the FA Cup soon after but the Europa League provided a potentially poetic peroration, particularly as it had already been leaked that he would join final opponents and former flame Chelsea in a director role upon hanging up his gloves.

Facing the Blues added a sort of testimonial aspect to his career climax; his teammates honoured that with an insipid, slow performance as the last game of one of the genuine modern goalkeeping greats saw him pluck the ball out of his own net four times.

Paolo Maldini

Although he would actually bow out with a Champions League qualification-clinching win and clean sheet against Fiorentina a week later, the iconic Maldini might not remember his San Siro sayonara so fondly.

To lose 3-2 to Roma was the injury; being bizarrely targeted by a section of the club’s Ultras was a bitter insult.

It was during his final lap of honour, at which most fans showed appreciation and adulation for service that spanned more than a quarter of a century and would be extended five more years with post-playing directorial roles, that Maldini spotted a message in the Curva Sud.

Later, another banner proudly displayed the image of Franco Baresi, accompanied with a chant of “there’s only one captain”. Maldini, perceived by many to have toed the company line once too often, stated only that he was “proud not to be one of them”.

Paul Gascoigne

It remains one of the finest single-competition runs of any player ever.

Gascoigne scored twice in the fourth and fifth rounds of the 1991 FA Cup, opening the scoring in the quarter-final and, most memorably of all, the semi-final against Arsenal at Wembley.

Tottenham were on the brink of their first silverware in seven years – imagine the crippling shame of embarking on such a trophy drought – and a 23-year-old upstart had dragged them there.

These might have been the final glimpses of Gascoigne at his absolute peak. He shone in fits and bursts for Lazio, Rangers, England and Gansu Tianma thereafter, but never as brightly nor as consistently as in those final Spurs months.

He required sedatives to sleep the night before the final against Nottingham Forest and, by his own admission, “was too hyped up”. In a tackle on Gary Charles designed to “let him know he was in a game”, Gascoigne ruptured the cruciate ligaments in his own right knee, took his place in the wall for Stuart Pearce to score the subsequent free-kick, then was substituted almost immediately afterwards, with barely 15 minutes played.

It was always likely to be his last match for Tottenham, with speculation of an £8.5m move to Lazio providing the backing track to his entire season. That still came to pass but at a downgraded £5.5m in the summer of 1992, following a year of rehabilitation and a setback that required surgery after an incident on a night out.

Cristiano Ronaldo

“We didn’t do well,” said Ronaldo. “The tactics were not good and everything went wrong for us. We were only in it for 10 minutes and we never found ourselves again. We lost a goal in the first minutes and after it was going to be difficult, but that’s football. Barcelona controlled the game and deserved to win. But I’m sure I’m going to play more finals.”

The Portuguese stayed true to that promise, even if Manchester United did actually return to that grand stage before the Portuguese following their separation. But the 2009 humbling against Barca in Rome will likely forever remain Ronaldo’s only defeat in a Champions League final.

While Ronaldo delivered another Premier League title after pledging one more season to Manchester United, his true desire was to help them defend their European crown before joining Real Madrid.

It ultimately ended in crushing failure, with Ronaldo upstaged by Lionel Messi to the extent that a series of gloriously petulant fouls culminated in his being booked purely coincidentally eight minutes after the Argentine doubled Barca’s lead.

Ronaldo would return many years later and thankfully eventually leave in far happier circumstances.

Robert Pires

It is a moment barely captured on video, an image cameras lingered on for only a second before returning to the unfolding story. Pires did not embrace Arsene Wenger or offer a handshake; he could not even bear to initiate eye contact.

The Frenchman’s last contribution in an Arsenal shirt was to be the sacrificial substitute when Jens Lehmann was sent off after 18 minutes against Barcelona, with Pires forced to watch a devastating defeat from the stands.

He was on an expiring contract that Arsenal were refusing to extend by more than one year, but he could hardly have planned his last game better: an actually good Champions League final in the Stade de France, with his family and friends in attendance.

Yet Pires barely had a chance to touch the ball by the time he was unceremoniously removed.

“I didn’t want to kill Wenger, but Jens? Yeah, I’d have killed the German! Bastard!” the vital Invincible later noted, although probably not to the keeper’s face. “It was the worst moment of my career,” he added, clearly having consigned his six months of playing alongside Nigel Reo-Coker at Aston Villa to the darkest recesses of his memory.

Steven Gerrard

The timing of a departure can lead to inevitable burnout. It was January 2 when Gerrard’s resolve to leave Liverpool upon the expiration of his contract that summer became public knowledge, thereby manufacturing a five-month run of emotional last evers and more failed happy endings than a clumsy massage parlour.

Would there be one final trophy? Not if Jack Grealish and Tim Sherwood had anything to do with it, with Aston Villa thwarting Liverpool in the FA Cup semi-final after Chelsea beat the Reds in the League Cup semis.

Besiktas handled the European leg of the farewell tour with a penalty shoot-out win in the Europa round of 32, Gerrard missing the second leg through injury.

Indifferent Premier League form guaranteed there would again be no title but perhaps a last Merseyside derby could stoke the fire? A 0-0 draw unfortunately passed by without incident at Goodison Park.

Then came his sending-off within 38 seconds of coming on as a substitute in his final meeting with Manchester United, followed by defeat to Crystal Palace in his Anfield adieu and, to be fair, a goal in his last Premier League game.

How unfortunate that it came after Stoke scored five before adding another late on.

Zinedine Zidane

Then there was Zidane, who waited until April 2006 before announcing that he would retire at the conclusion of that year’s World Cup. Real Madrid had finished a distant second in La Liga and exited the Copa del Rey and Champions League at the semi-final and last-16 stages respectively, so it was on France to ensure ZZ’s definitive goodbye was top.

He did the majority of the heavy lifting, mind, scoring against Spain in the round of 16, delivering a masterclass against Brazil in the quarter-finals and netting the only goal against Portugal in the semis.

Zidane even put Les Bleus in the lead against Italy in the final but would not have an opportunity to repeat such penalty heroics after planting a cranium kiss into Marco Materazzi’s chest cavity in extra-time. He had it coming for playing for Everton.

Diego Maradona

There was his final game at Barcelona: a 1-0 defeat in the 1984 Copa del Rey final, after which he helped instigate the sort of mass brawl We Hate To See by headbutting, elbowing and kneeing three separate players in a quite impressive display of non-simultaneous dexterity, all in front of the watching Spanish royal family.

Then at Napoli, where he spent one season too many and was handed a 15-month ban for cocaine-related charges in April 1991, the club finishing a disappointing eighth in defence of their Serie A crown and Maradona’s final game coming in a chastening 4-1 defeat to Sampdoria.

Even his one year at Sevilla ended inauspiciously when he was substituted after 53 minutes of a nondescript La Liga game in June 1993, before tearing off his captain’s armband, screaming at the manager, storming down the tunnel and subsequently leaving for Newell’s Old Boys.

But that pales in comparison to his exit from the international scene.

As a result of his drugs ban, Maradona played just six times for Argentina between the 1990 World Cup final defeat to Germany and the 1994 tournament in the United States. Yet the 33-year-old could hardly not be picked in the vain hope of rekindling that 1986 magic.

A dreadful qualifying campaign saw La Albiceleste scrape past Australia in a play-off, inspired to victory by a returning Maradona. The national clamour for him to make the squad was inevitable and successful.

“I am tired of all those who said I was fat and no longer the great Maradona,” he said in the build-up. “They will see the real Diego at the World Cup.”

It could be argued that the version which turned up was too real.

Argentina would last just four games of the finals, and Maradona two. His fine goal and frenzied celebration in the group opener against Greece preceded an assist in a win over Nigeria, which itself came before perhaps the least ‘random’ drugs test in human history, predictable positive sample and early trip home.