TA: Salah the Liverpool player is no longer untouchable, but his legacy is

A couple of hours before kick-off at Anfield, a queue was forming near the King Harry pub. 

The terraced streets around the stadium have been decorated with murals acclaiming Liverpool heroes past and present. At the corner where Blessington Road meets Anfield Road, the Mohamed Salah tribute was drawing quite a crowd.

It is a stunning piece of work by local artist John Culshaw, depicting Salah’s celebrations after two of the 250 goals he has scored for Liverpool.

One of them, arms outstretched, followed the deft chip he scored in the Champions League quarter-final second leg at Manchester City in 2018. The other sees him walking away through red smoke after a memorable strike in a Merseyside derby at Everton in 2021.

What a player Salah has been for Liverpool. “A legend,” said Donal Cheape, from Dublin, one of the fans who had gathered next to the mural. “He’s one of the club’s greatest players of all time.”

He is. And there is something so captivating in the story of a boy from a small village in rural Egypt who defied overwhelming odds not just to make it to the Premier League but, through his brilliance, to make such an enormous impression at a club with Liverpool’s rich history and vast global appeal.

In a sport where so much business seems transactional these days, it has been one of those relationships that feels perfect: the right player at the right club at the right time.

But while fans can take a player to their hearts, the relationship between a club and a player is often complex, particularly once the years pass and that player’s performance level starts to dip. Slot responded to that by leaving Salah out of the squad for last Tuesday’s Champions League match away to Inter, which Liverpool won 1-0. At that point, with tensions running high, it was entirely possible that the forward, about to depart on Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) duty with Egypt, had played his last game for the club.

And yet there we were, on Saturday afternoon, with Salah not just back in the squad after clear-the-air talks the previous day but summoned from the substitutes’ bench in the 26th minute following an injury to defender Joe Gomez.

Given all the possible Salah scenarios speculated upon in the press room beforehand — coming off the bench to score a late goal, restricted to the briefest of late cameos, left to stew on the sidelines throughout — such an early introduction, with Liverpool already leading against Brighton & Hove Albion through Hugo Ekitike’s first-minute strike, seemed rather less dramatic.

What it allowed all of us, perhaps not least Slot, was an extended opportunity to see whether Salah could plug in, tactically, physically and perhaps not least psychologically, to the demands of this new reality.

For much of the past decade, first under Jurgen Klopp and last season under Slot, so much of Liverpool’s attacking setup was built around a hyper-creative partnership on the right-hand side, with Trent Alexander-Arnold at full-back and Salah cutting in from the wing. With Alexander-Arnold now at Real Madrid and Salah now 33, it was recognised in the summer that Liverpool needed to diversify how they created and finished chances, hence the acquisitions of three elite-level — and extremely expensive — attacking players in Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Ekitike.

It has been a struggle this season, as much for the new boys as for just about everyone else at Anfield. But where Salah has appeared troubled by the passing of time, Wirtz by the Premier League’s intense physicality, and Isak by just about every aspect of life as a £125million ($170m) footballer, Ekitike has been a rare source of optimism and joy.

It is not just Ekitike’s numbers (seven Premier League goals, plus one each in the Champions League, Carabao Cup and Community Shield) that are impressive. It is also the speed and fluency of his movement and his finishing that offer encouragement, particularly in contrast to Isak’s struggles.

As much as the eye was drawn to Salah on Saturday, he looked like a supporting actor. Right from the start against Brighton, Ekitike was the main man, crashing the ball past into the roof of Bart Verbruggen’s net inside 60 seconds and leading the front line with the elan that has too often been missing from Liverpool’s attacking play this season. Two goals at Leeds last Saturday and two goals here, all of them showcasing different parts of his goalscoring repertoire.

And when you have, in Ekitike, a different type of centre-forward — different from Firmino, different from Darwin Nunez, different from the late Diogo Jota — the dynamic of that forward line changes. Wirtz, increasingly, appears to be tuned to Ekitike’s wavelength, but it remains to be seen whether Salah, at this stage of his career, has the energy or the inclination to adjust to a system built around serving a centre-forward rather than optimising his own enormous but declining powers.

Salah worked hard on Saturday. For one Brighton counter-attack in the first half, he raced back quicker than any of his team-mates, even if the cross was overhit. But even so, Dominik Szoboszlai and then Curtis Jones, who both had stints at right-back after Gomez’s injury, were both overrun on occasions as the visiting team pushed forward in the second half. It is hard to blame Salah for that, but it was arguably the most vulnerable Liverpool’s right-hand side had looked since he was dropped four games earlier.

But Slot was pleased by Salah’s contribution to the 2-0 win. It included an assist for Ekitike’s second goal from a corner, and several chances created for others, as well as an opportunity that he couldn’t quite convert when picked out by substitute Federico Chiesa in stoppage time.

For all the discussion of defensive shortcomings this season, Slot told reporters after that Salah had performed “as I think every fan — including me — would like him to perform today”. “He was a threat,” the head coach said. “And that’s very important because, if you play with attackers, you’re hoping they are a threat to the other team.”

The scenes at the final whistle — Salah lingering much longer than usual to applaud supporters in all four stands, who responded in kind — had the feel of a send-off. But was it really the end of the road? Or was it more like a recognition of continuing uncertainty as he departs on AFCON duty? It looked more like the latter.

Slot said he expects Salah back at Liverpool in January and that there is “no issue to resolve” after their discussion on Friday, but some of his responses were a little more equivocal. Likewise, Salah’s social media posts on Saturday evening, sharing the footage of those scenes at the final whistle without further comment.

What is clear is that we have entered the final phase of Salah’s Liverpool career. Whether a parting of the ways happens in the coming weeks, at the end of this season, at the end of his contract in June 2027 or, improbably, some time beyond that, the events of the past week have signalled a change in the relationship.

For the first time since he arrived on Merseyside, Salah is not an untouchable — and if he is as outraged by that as he appeared last weekend at Leeds, then the tensions are not simply going to be washed away.

Salah has loved everything about playing for Liverpool for these past eight and a half years: not just scoring goals and winning trophies but the status and the adulation that those exploits have brought him. But even though the “Egyptian king” was given a throne to sit on for the images that accompanied his new contract announcement last April, he must have known there would come a time when young pretenders to his crown would emerge and his status would change.

Nothing lasts forever in sport. Nothing, that is, except the memories and the images that the most treasured players, like those blessed with Salah’s rare gifts, leave behind. It is why, for all the talk of legacies being trashed by one three-minute interview, his legendary status at the club has not been under the slightest threat.

But that status does not offer guarantees of a starting place once time catches up with a player. At that point, it becomes a case of whether a player can find ways to keep defying that most unforgiving opponent or to adjust accordingly. For Salah, as for everyone else at Anfield as they watched him disappear down the tunnel on Saturday, that remains the great unknown.