Is Mo Salah Leaving Liverpool? | OneFootball

It is fair to say that when Mo Salah speaks, the world listens. His decision to attack Arne Slot and the upper echelons of the Liverpool management in the wake of the club’s 3-3 draw with Leeds United was one that got tongues wagging, even from those that don’t normally pay a huge amount of attention to football.

Not only one of the best players that the Premier League has ever seen, the Egyptian King is also a global icon, so his choice to say that he’d been ‘thrown under the bus’ was always going to make headlines. The question is, is this a precursor to his departure from Anfield?

Salah Isn’t Part of Liverpool’s Future

As I said in the Guardian recently, Mohamed Salah is one of the best players ever to wear the club colours. When he assisted the goal for Hugo Ekitike on Saturday afternoon against Brighton & Hove Albion, he ensured that he’d had more goal involvements than any other player of the Premier League era, so it isn’t a stretch to say that he’s one of the best players that competition has ever seen.

He is also a 33-year-old, so his future as a footballer lies away from the Anfield pitch. He isn’t an idiot, so he will be more than aware of the fact that he’ll be leaving sooner rather than later.

For a man of his talent and ability, it can’t be easy to know that your career is coming to an end. To have that fact thrown in your face by a manager dropping you down to the bench must be even harder to accept, yet Arne Slot objectively made the right decision.

Aside from anything else, Salah has no left for the Africa Cup of Nations, so Slot had to try to find a way for us to play without him before he departed, rather than leaving it until the last minute. It was a decision that prepares us for the future in both the short term and the long term, which won’t have Mo Salah as part of the team.

Will he See Out his Contract?

There is an argument to be made that when Mo Salah signed his new contract with Liverpool last summer, there was an agreement put in place for the sale of him in 2026. It would mean that the Reds would get some money for one of the best players ever to wear the shirt and the man himself would have his pick of destinations.

A lot of what happened next was always going to be dependent on how this season panned out. If the Egyptian King had carried on racking up the goals and assists, the likelihood is that the Reds would have wanted him to see out his contract.

As it happens, between the death of Diogo Jota, the change in the way that we’re playing and the natural ageing of the man himself, his form has taken a nosedive. As a result, it is reasonably clear that Salah’s days left playing Premier League football are numbered, so it makes sense for all parties for him to depart in the summer after he gives his all to help the Reds rescue a season that is still very much on the brink right now.

None of which is to say that what has gone before isn’t appreciated by everyone, as his reception at the end of Saturday’s match made all too clear.

Where he Might End Up

The most obvious link for Mo Salah right now is to Saudi Arabia. It would be a major boon for the sportswashing operation of the murderous regime in the Kingdom to persuade one of the most high-profile Muslim footballers to be signed up to play in the league. Yet that might also be a move that is filled with problems for the player himself.

Let us not forget that he poses in front of a Christmas tree with his family every year and that his daughters, Makka and Kayan, have grown up in Liverpool and live a Westernised life. Having to change to a much stricter one might not be what they want.

With that in mind, there could well be a temptation for Salah to follow in the footsteps of Lionel Messi and head to the United States of America. He will also believe that he still has enough to offer a major European team, so perhaps a move to France, Italy or Germany could still be on the cards; after all, Robert Lewandowski was older than Salah whilst still playing for Bayern Munich and is currently a Barcelona player as a 37-year-old.

What happens next will depend on Liverpool getting a fee they think is acceptable and Salah getting an offer to play somewhere he wants to.