Mohamed Salah is a giant of a player who has trailed joy and triumph in his wake for almost a decade at Anfield. He deserves a place in Liverpool’s pantheon of legends alongside the greatest players to have represented the club.
But what he did on Saturday, when he released a clumsy, thinly-veiled, vindictive attack on manager Arne Slot ahead of Salah’s final game for the club on Sunday, was classless and small. It made him look like a little man, not a hero.
It made him look bitter. It made him look petulant. It made him look manipulative. It made him look like a child in the final stages of a screaming tantrum that has gone on for quite some time.
It made him look like someone desperate for one last hit of attention. And, at a moment when Slot is already being assailed from all sides and facing demands that he be sacked after a deeply disappointing season, it made Salah look like a bully.
The irony – an irony which will not have been lost on Slot – is that Salah’s form fell off a cliff this season. It has been one of the reasons why Liverpool have failed so miserably to defend the title they won at a canter last season.
Funnily enough, Salah didn’t mention that in his statement. He didn’t apologise to Liverpool fans for his own shortcomings in a season that suggested strongly that the club made a mistake when they gave him a new and highly lucrative contract last year.
‘Us crumbling to yet another defeat this season was very painful and not what our fans deserve,’ wrote Salah after Liverpool had fallen to their 19th loss of the season against Aston Villa at Villa Park on Friday night.
‘I want to see Liverpool go back to being the heavy metal attacking team that opponents fear and back to being a team that wins trophies. That is the football I know how to play and that is the identity that needs to be recovered and kept for good. It cannot be negotiable and everyone that joins this club should adapt to it. Winning some games here and there is not what Liverpool should be about. All teams win games.’
There is more where that came from but it’s more of the same. It is so transparently, breathtakingly self-serving that it is actually rather sad. Somebody should have told Salah to try to behave with a modicum of dignity just for the rest of the week. But it was obviously beyond him.
If Salah wants this to be a week of hard truths in the build-up to his departure, here’s one for him to ponder: he has been looking like a player on the downslope of his career for some time. He is a shadow of the player he once was.
And if Slot has to take most of the blame for Liverpool’s dire season, Salah has to share in it. When Slot needed him most this season, when Florian Wirtz was struggling to adapt to the English game, when Alexander Isak was out injured, when the club was missing Trent Alexander-Arnold and Luis Diaz, Salah wasn’t there. He was ineffectual. If anything, Slot has indulged him too much.
‘He wants to play heavy metal football, so he's basically saying he wants Jurgen Klopp football,’ Wayne Rooney told the BBC after he saw Salah’s statement. ‘Now, I don't think Mo Salah can cope with that type of football any more.
‘I think his legs have gone to play at that high tempo and high intensity. Salah's trying to vindicate himself and make himself feel better because he's had a very poor season.’
Think what you like about Slot and, yes, the case for removing him before the start of next season is growing with every poor performance that Liverpool produce and every inference that elements of the dressing room have turned against him. But this is not just some no-mark boss that we are talking about here. This is a man who came into the club last season to replace Klopp and won the league title at his first attempt.
You can make all the arguments you want about it being Klopp’s team and Klopp’s style but how often does that happen? How often does it happen that a great manager leaves and the new man picks up seamlessly and improves the team from the season before? In the last 125 years of Liverpool’s history, only 10 managers have won the league. Slot is one of them. Liverpool have only won the title twice in the Premier League era. Klopp won one. Slot won the other.
Slot deserves more respect than a cheap attack from a player who had already gone public with his dissatisfaction with the manager earlier in the season when he claimed he had been ‘thrown under the bus’ at Liverpool and that his relationship with Slot had broken down.
Those with longer memories may have permitted themselves a wry smile when Salah eulogised Klopp. It was only a couple of years ago when Salah staged a public altercation with his manager on the touchline at Anfield after Klopp had left him out of the starting XI for a 2-2 draw with West Ham United.
Salah looks out for Salah. He has been a consummate professional and a magnificent player for Liverpool but if Slot were a vindictive man, he would leave him out of the matchday squad for Liverpool’s final game of the season against Brentford at Anfield on Sunday. He would tell him that, if he holds the manager of the club in such disdain, he should leave immediately.
If Salah wants to go over the head of the manager, if he wants to disrespect him publicly and set himself up as the champion of the club, let him organise his own send-off down at the Pier Head. He can put out another statement on X and let the fans know when and where they should turn up. He is bigger than the club now, after all.
Moving tale of nice-guy Rai
Golf has produced stories of wonderful drama in the past couple of years, many of which have centred on the glorious renaissance of Rory McIlroy, the sport’s greatest asset. And yet there was something about Aaron Rai’s victory at the PGA Championship at Aronimink, Pennsylvania, this weekend that was more moving and more startling than any of those previous dramas.
At a course outside Philadelphia, the home of sport’s greatest fictional underdog, Rocky Balboa, Aaron Rai, who grew up a working-class kid from Wolverhampton and has never finished in the top 10 of a major before, became the first Englishman to win the tournament for more than a century.
Rai’s reputation is that he is one of the nicest guys on the tour. Everything about his triumph and his comportment in victory suggested that reputation is well deserved.
Alonso must hope Chelsea have seen the error of their ways
Good luck to Xabi Alonso, newly confirmed as the next man through the revolving door at Chelsea. It’s a great coup for Chelsea but it’s a brave move for Alonso.
Unless something changes at Stamford Bridge, unless the power shifts away from its hapless ownership and its equally hapless sporting directors, then it doesn’t matter who the club appoints.
There are suggestions the club hierarchy has seen the error of its ways and that Alonso will be given more power than previous incumbents. If that happens, then maybe there is a chance that Chelsea escape their cycle of mediocrity.