This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on September 4, 2023 - September 10, 2023
If a week is a long time in politics, it can seem an eternity in football’s transfer window. Days before it closed on Sept 1, the possibility of Mo Salah leaving Liverpool for Saudi Arabia was enough to cause panic on Merseyside. His manager Jurgen Klopp admitted: “If it happened, it would be a catastrophe.” And not just for the club but the English Premier League (EPL) as well.
For now, those fears have been allayed. The superstar striker has reaffirmed that he is staying and tweeted pictures of himself as “a tourist in London” and not, as had been reported, undergoing a medical. Instead of sabotaging Liverpool’s season, he was celebrating a victory that gave it lift-off.
The capture of Salah would not have caused a shift in football’s tectonic plates, but it would have moved the needle. The balance of power — tilted so heavily towards Western Europe and the EPL in particular — would have nudged eastwards. But the wise money is on this historic turning point merely being delayed.
“The Egyptian King”, as he is known to Liverpool fans, would represent the jewel in the crown for Saudi recruitment. Forget Cristiano Ronaldo, a fading force topping up his pension. Forget the hedonistic Neymar, still opting for lifestyle over legacy. And forget three dozen others swept up in the ongoing plunder of European football. Salah is the one they really want.
Like almost all the rest, he is of “pensionable” age at 31, but shows no sign of waning. One of the EPL’s all-time greats, he is still the fulcrum of Liverpool’s attack for whom the owners burst their pay ceiling to keep on £350,000 (RM2.1 million) a week. But the sobering reality is that Al-Ittihad of the Saudi Pro League are offering to treble that and make him the best-paid footballer on the planet.
Klopp, still reeling from losing two experienced pillars of his midfield to “oil money” a month earlier, was already thinking the unthinkable as rumours mounted. The game at Newcastle was supposed to have been Salah’s last but, in the event, he got an assist in a remarkable comeback win that has given them an enormous boost.
Prior to that game and even after it, fans were anxiously scrolling for news of the dreaded departure. What fuelled their fears was that after the EPL transfer window closed at midnight on Sept 1, the Saudi window remains open till the 7th.
It’s like bolting the front door but leaving the back door open. On this oversight, Klopp said: “I asked, several weeks ago, for the authorities to look into this, because they [the Saudis] can come and take the players away.”
Taking Salah away at this juncture would be Liverpool’s worst nightmare as they wouldn’t even have the option to panic-buy a replacement — if one exists.
They could, of course, demand a fee that even the Saudis would baulk at, but that would risk keeping a player whose head may have been turned. But that does not appear to be the case with Salah, whose agent Ramy Abbas insisted: “We wouldn’t have signed a new contract last summer if we had considered leaving.”
Even more reassuring for Liverpool is that when Saudi clubs want a player, they approach him first and only when he’s agreeable do they contact the club. And do so again and again with ever-increasing offers until they break.
Although some cynics haven’t ruled out Salah “doing the dirty” on Liverpool before the Saudi shutters come down, the consensus is that it’s unlikely. Salah is not Neymar or Ronaldo. With a nod to John F Kennedy, he knows what his club has done for him and what he has done for his club.
He arrived as a former Chelsea misfit via Roma for a modest £38 million six years ago and, under Klopp’s inspired tutelage, became a legend. In 308 appearances, he has scored 187 goals and just passed Steven Gerrard on the club’s all-time list. He has been crucial to Liverpool winning everything in its most recent golden era.
But even those impressive stats don’t convey the wow factor he has brought to the team. He has dazzled, he has defied gravity and is part of a stellar cast that makes the EPL the best league in the world. It is also why Saudi Arabia is prepared to break the bank to get him.
All that combined with his general demeanour and charity work are credited with reducing Islamophobia. A study by Stanford University revealed that anti-Muslim hate crimes on Merseyside had dropped significantly since his arrival.
A strop when pulled off late in a recent game was seen in some quarters as a possible breaking point with his manager, but Salah has never liked being hooked and Klopp sees it as evidence of his commitment. It seems unlikely that Salah could harbour any lasting grudge, and certainly not enough to end a long and fruitful marriage with nary a note on the fridge door.
That said, neither he nor Liverpool can ignore the numbers being bandied about. For him, it’s not another fleet of pink Lamborghinis but improving the lives of his own people. What is often overlooked is just how much Salah has done for his community in the Nile Delta, and Saudi zillions would enable him to do a lot more. And if he was in the kingdom, he’d be closer to home.
His wages have completely transformed Nagrig, once a poor village, with new infrastructure, schools and a hospital, and support for low-income families. It is why, in the Gulf, not even Messi can compare: Salah is deified.
It would be a downward step for his career, but he’s won all there is to win with Liverpool and would not want to tarnish his legacy. So a move next summer, giving Liverpool time (and money) to find an alternative, seems a sensible compromise. The king is irreplaceable but with a fee in excess of £100 million in their pocket, an orderly succession might be achieved.
Indeed, when Philippe Coutinho was sold to Barcelona for £140 million in 2017, the Reds bought Virgil van Dijk and Allison Becker with the proceeds — and the rest is history. While Liverpool can see a way out of this, the EPL has to face up to a new reality: When a star is cherry-picked, they don’t get compensated and the whole show loses lustre.
Former Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler, now managing in Saudi Arabia, summed it up: “We speak about emerging leagues making statements. The Premier League did that when they started signing the best talent in the world, and Mo Salah would be the ultimate statement.”
For one of its own crown jewels, like Liverpool, to be vulnerable to recruiting raids of this magnitude will come as a rude shock. The least the EPL can do is get Fifa to close the transfer windows at the same time.
More players will inevitably be tempted by the life-changing offers, but reports of intense heat and second-rate facilities outside of the elite clubs will make the younger ones think twice about spending a whole career there.
Still, the mere possibility of Salah leaving has changed the football landscape and warm winds from the desert have blown in a simmering new reality.
Bob Holmes is a long-time sportswriter specialising in football
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