What Next for Mo Salah After Decision To Leave Liverpool At The End Of The 2026 Season | OneFootball

When the dust settles and people choose to write lists about the best players that have ever pulled on a Liverpool shirt, Mohamed Salah will be part of the conversation. When you think about some of the people that have lined up for the Reds over the years, that is one hell of an accomplishment.

We will see other players that get us out of our seats and who thrill and excite, but the likelihood of seeing anyone that even comes close to what Salah has achieved at Anfield is extremely slim. Having broken dozens of Liverpool records, we now know that the Egyptian King will leave at the end of the season, but what’s next for him?

Could Saudi Arabia be His Next Destination?

It was during Jürgen Klopp’s final season as Liverpool manager that clubs from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia began to make their interest in signing Mo Salah known. On the one hand, that is hardly a surprise when you consider the fact that the Egyptian King might well be one of the world’s most famous Muslims and will certainly be on the list of the best-known Muslim footballers.

In the May of last year, Salah confirmed that talks with representatives of Saudi-based clubs had been ‘serious’, which is likely to capture his attention on account of the fact that he could triple the £400,000 per week wages that he’s currently believed to be on.

There is a world, though, where this is just a matter of people adding together two and two and coming up with five. Having married his childhood sweetheart, Magi Sadeq, the pair have two daughters, Makka and Kayan, who grew up in Liverpool.

The players’ daughters have become used to living in the Western world, having the freedom given to anyone who lives in England, to the point that the family pose in front of a Christmas tree every December. Women are not allowed such freedoms in Saudi Arabia, so it is difficult to see a world in which his daughters in particular would be happy living in such an oppressive regime.

The MLS Could Beckon

Although the United States of America under Donald Trump isn’t exactly a beacon of freedom for those that enter the country and don’t have white skin, the likelihood is that a player as high-profile as Mo Salah would be able to live and work in a much more free manner than most. Having seen what Lionel Messi has been able to do since joining the world of Major League Soccer, Salah may well be licking his lips at the prospect of doing something similar. The Argentinian is believed to be earning between $70 and $80 million a year, which is nowhere near what Salah could earn in Saudi Arabia, but isn’t to be scoffed at either.

One of the things that Salah is likely to be able to do if he does move to the MLS is continue his work as an icon. There aren’t many footballers that have had a mural of themselves put up in Times Square, but Salah is one of them. Whilst Cristiano Ronaldo couldn’t enter America for a while and therefore had to make do with the semi-retirement that is playing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the same is not the case for Salah.

It is not difficult to imagine a world in which the Egyptian King takes over from Messi as the biggest star to appear in the States, which may well lead to him confirming his place as one of the biggest footballers ever.

Could a European Club Beckon?

The truth of the matter is that neither the Saudi Pro League nor the MLS are likely to appeal to the more competitive nature of Mo Salah. The player clearly thrived in setting record after record for Liverpool, doing whatever he could to chase down those above him in the goal-scoring category. He does not strike me as the sort of person who will be happy to wander off into the sunset and join the relative footballing obscurity of either Saudi Arabia or the United States. That, then, means that lining up for another European club, but which of them could even begin to afford his wages? Would the ones that can even want him?

Paris Saint-Germain might well have been the obvious destination in years gone by, but the French club have reinvented themselves as of late to become a serious proposition rather than a side where players go to see out their careers for large sums of money. Real Madrid aren’t quite the Galacticos of old, either. It means that Salah would probably have to take a pay cut to head anywhere in Europe, which he can obviously afford to do but may not actually want to. If he does, then his options will open up significantly, perhaps even allowing him to return to a former home like Roma. Regardless, he’ll be missed in Liverpool.