Mo Salah showed his frustrations against club and manager after being dropped, but must realise that age catches up with us all…
MOHAMED Salah cares.
He wants to play. He wants to help. It’s the best form of communication he has. If that’s taken away, Salah would (and clearly did) feel voiceless.
Arne Slot also cares. Virgil van Dijk cares. Andy Robertson cares. Robertson joined Liverpool in the same transfer window as Salah and has faced far more affront and personal humiliation this season.
But Robertson isn’t Salah, and Salah is very much Salah. I was poised for a mixed-zone quote when he didn’t emerge from the bench at Leeds. Instead, we got a monologue of shit poured down on Arne Slot and Liverpool Football Club. What we got helped nothing or nobody. Not even Salah.
And yet I want him to care. I want him yearning to be involved. I want him to use the frustration and ire of his and Liverpool’s situation on the pitch. Salah’s comments are because he feels constrained from doing so and that’s understandable.
It’s important to remember that Salah has used media and social media positively in the past. He has reiterated the standards required for Liverpool when they haven’t been met and promised better. What he did last Saturday went too far, and now we’re in a place of posturing and negotiation.
Salah and Slot will meet before Brighton and discuss next steps. There is a factor present in this argument which will only continue to work against the Egyptian forward:
His age.
Salah is 33-years-old. Last season was possibly his best in a Liverpool shirt. He was unplayable and single-minded with determination to win major honours. He delivered.
Whether you believe he can repeat a season like this again is open to debate. Yet no longer debatable is whether Salah can get better as a player. Whether he can scale new heights as a finisher, dribbler, athlete etc. At 33, the player has reached the top of his mountain and is very slowly climbing down – no matter how much he fights the decline.
I still believe Salah can perform at the highest level. What’s going wrong is far more tactical than biological. I don’t think the player has ‘lost his legs’ and I didn’t want him dropped in the way some social media profiles who are now seemingly outraged by his treatment did.
But from a perspective of holding cards in a multi-million-pound business negotiation – which is what this effectively now is – Salah has lost his greatest asset.
We view footballers through the lenses of ability and age. If they have the ability, the question then becomes about who controls their key years. Where the player chooses to spend them benefits the destination club and can damage any departing one. These players become embodiments of success and representations of standing.
There are countless examples of this over the years, the most recent being Trent Alexander-Arnold. The wrath faced by the player at Anfield around his summer move to Real Madrid partly comes down to where he was in his career. At 26-years-old, Trent was in his prime. His age coupled with his ability gave him agency in the situation.
If he was in his 30’s, Liverpool supporters may have been more relaxed knowing they’d already had his best years. And crucially, Real Madrid would probably have not been in the queue to sign him. The reality is that all supporters preach loyalty; players are only useful to us until they aren’t. And that is massively defined by age.
Look at Jordan Henderson, who effectively left Liverpool for money. If any Liverpool captain had demanded a move to another country that would reportedly pay him significantly more than ours, there would be outrage. Instead, a general sense of acceptance prevailed. Why? Because Henderson had passed his peak and didn’t hold anywhere near as much value as he once had.
If Salah was currently Trent’s age, the player would hold most of the power in the current situation. The optics of Liverpool losing Salah in his mid-20s would be unbearable. Sympathy for the player and therefore against a struggling manager would have boiled over. The club might have decided that Salah was too important to lose and Slot was more disposable. As it is, any decision will have applied context that Salah is in the autumn of the year.
The current fallout is unlikely to see anyone back down, so what next for Salah if he leaves? A toddle off to Saudi Arabia or USA is most likely. An abyss of nothingness. Even if he stayed in Europe, it’s unlikely there’s any scenario where Liverpool will look like a once great force now being picked-off by a more serious outfit.
Any move will likely end his standing as a player at the elite level. There are three or four clubs that would represent a sideways move, but I’d be stunned if Paris Saint-Germain was willing to stump up, for example. There simply isn’t a transfer which damages Liverpool’s reputation as a top club.
Age just simply is a factor, here. Salah is an incredible athlete and his output is still at the very highest level, but this has nothing to do with physical standings or whether he should be in Liverpool’s starting XI. It’s now about leverage and reputation for all involved, and Liverpool have a trump card.
That this situation has arisen is entirely deflating. I love Mohamed Salah, he is my lifetime’s Ian Rush and Roger Hunt. Players like him and people like him do not come around often. He is an embodiment of professionalism and talent. His story is an inspiring reminder of how wonderful diversity and multi-culturalism is. He is a brilliant Liverpudlian.
I want him to have more flowers. But more important is my desire for Liverpool to be ok. The club is and remains the most important thing to all of us. When Salah spoke on Saturday, the only people happy to receive it were those despising our club. Those happy to see us plunged into further turmoil.
Salah, whether he likes it or not, must factor that age works against him here. It’s the one true undeniable of the entire charade.
