WHEN WE TALK about loyalty in professional football we really speak of the aligning of self-interest.
For eight wildly successful years, Mo Salah’s self-interest aligned with Liverpool’s self-interest, but now, for the first time, they clearly diverge. And so Salah will now leave Liverpool, most likely in January.
Salah himself knows this, and this is why he pulled the pin on a grenade in the Elland Road mixed zone. His interview was astonishing but these were not the words of a player trying to engineer an exit of the club. He knows he is already on the way out.
Salah’s previous interviews have all been tactical plays for a contract extension from a position of strength, but this was the first time he spoke from a position of weakness.
Salah is out of the team and, remarkable as it is to say this, the five points Liverpool won from games against West Ham, Sunderland and Leeds marks their best run of form since September.
Salah’s extraordinary output last season gave Liverpool no option but to renew his contract, as allowing him leave for nothing at the end of arguably the greatest individual season in Premier League history would have been a brave call in the Yes, Minister sense of the phrase.
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Arne Slot was canny enough not to carry any ideas too firm or inflexible into Liverpool when he replaced Jurgen Klopp, and so he largely exempted Salah from defensive work and built the team around him. This satisfied Salah’s awesome ego, which in turn suited Liverpool just perfectly.
But that was then and this is now.
If Liverpool knew they couldn’t jettison Salah, they also knew they couldn’t avoid planning for a future without him, hence the splurge on Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak.
Slot didn’t build this season’s team around Salah not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t. That plan was blown asunder the moment Trent Alexander-Arnold decided he wanted out. Salah averaged 1.2 goal contributions per game last season when Alexander-Arnold was in the team, but that halved to 0.6 in the 10 games Salah played without him last season. That average has dropped further to 0.42 so far this season.
Without Alexander-Arnold, Liverpool are finding it much more difficult to get Salah on the ball in dangerous attacking areas, which in turn has accentuated his disinterest in defending. Marc Cucurella spoke of Chelsea’s targeting of this fact after their win over Liverpool this season, while Mauro Junior skipping easily by Salah to assist PSV’s second goal at Anfield will go down as Salah’s moment of no return at Liverpool.
So this is not the straightforward tale of a player whose legs have gone: his physical decline started in advance of last season, not this one. No, this is the story of a team whose primary self-interest no longer lies in setting up to maximise Salah’s strengths. Salah himself knew this months ago: his social media post calling for “respect for the Premier League champions” like Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez now reads less like a defence of former team-mates than it does a guy suddenly realising that the world around him had changed, and not to his liking.
Football’s capacity to fascinate lies the tension between the individual and the collective. A football team works best as a kind of benign monarchy, which is a fact known even to the Catalan Pep Guardiola – nobody’s idea of a royalist – who once described his era-defining Barcelona team as a collective working hard to serve Messi as its king.
Anfield proclaimed Salah their “Egyptian King”, but the arrivals of Wirtz and Isak have complicated the picture.
In this instance, heavy is the head that doesn’t wear the crown. Salah’s advancing age meant Liverpool had to plan for succession, and Alexander-Arnold’s exit made that planning more urgent. Liverpool have made it clear that this will eventually be the team of Wirtz and Isak, and Salah hasn’t been able to handle that reality.
And frankly, can you blame him?
His Elland Road outburst was selfish and unreasonable, but if Salah was not selfish and unreasonable, he would have been just another talented kid who didn’t get the break he needed to get out of Egypt. If Salah wasn’t selfish and unreasonable, he wouldn’t have recovered from flopping at Chelsea to become one of the Premier League’s greatest-ever players.
But now he knows it is all over, and that Liverpool are prepared to move on without him.
When people say that it is lonely at the top – this is what they mean.
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Salah knows his time at Liverpool is over, and he is right to say it is not his fault
WHEN WE TALK about loyalty in professional football we really speak of the aligning of self-interest.
For eight wildly successful years, Mo Salah’s self-interest aligned with Liverpool’s self-interest, but now, for the first time, they clearly diverge. And so Salah will now leave Liverpool, most likely in January.
Salah himself knows this, and this is why he pulled the pin on a grenade in the Elland Road mixed zone. His interview was astonishing but these were not the words of a player trying to engineer an exit of the club. He knows he is already on the way out.
Salah’s previous interviews have all been tactical plays for a contract extension from a position of strength, but this was the first time he spoke from a position of weakness.
Salah is out of the team and, remarkable as it is to say this, the five points Liverpool won from games against West Ham, Sunderland and Leeds marks their best run of form since September.
Salah’s extraordinary output last season gave Liverpool no option but to renew his contract, as allowing him leave for nothing at the end of arguably the greatest individual season in Premier League history would have been a brave call in the Yes, Minister sense of the phrase.
Arne Slot was canny enough not to carry any ideas too firm or inflexible into Liverpool when he replaced Jurgen Klopp, and so he largely exempted Salah from defensive work and built the team around him. This satisfied Salah’s awesome ego, which in turn suited Liverpool just perfectly.
But that was then and this is now.
If Liverpool knew they couldn’t jettison Salah, they also knew they couldn’t avoid planning for a future without him, hence the splurge on Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak.
Slot didn’t build this season’s team around Salah not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t. That plan was blown asunder the moment Trent Alexander-Arnold decided he wanted out. Salah averaged 1.2 goal contributions per game last season when Alexander-Arnold was in the team, but that halved to 0.6 in the 10 games Salah played without him last season. That average has dropped further to 0.42 so far this season.
Without Alexander-Arnold, Liverpool are finding it much more difficult to get Salah on the ball in dangerous attacking areas, which in turn has accentuated his disinterest in defending. Marc Cucurella spoke of Chelsea’s targeting of this fact after their win over Liverpool this season, while Mauro Junior skipping easily by Salah to assist PSV’s second goal at Anfield will go down as Salah’s moment of no return at Liverpool.
So this is not the straightforward tale of a player whose legs have gone: his physical decline started in advance of last season, not this one. No, this is the story of a team whose primary self-interest no longer lies in setting up to maximise Salah’s strengths. Salah himself knew this months ago: his social media post calling for “respect for the Premier League champions” like Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez now reads less like a defence of former team-mates than it does a guy suddenly realising that the world around him had changed, and not to his liking.
Football’s capacity to fascinate lies the tension between the individual and the collective. A football team works best as a kind of benign monarchy, which is a fact known even to the Catalan Pep Guardiola – nobody’s idea of a royalist – who once described his era-defining Barcelona team as a collective working hard to serve Messi as its king.
Anfield proclaimed Salah their “Egyptian King”, but the arrivals of Wirtz and Isak have complicated the picture.
In this instance, heavy is the head that doesn’t wear the crown. Salah’s advancing age meant Liverpool had to plan for succession, and Alexander-Arnold’s exit made that planning more urgent. Liverpool have made it clear that this will eventually be the team of Wirtz and Isak, and Salah hasn’t been able to handle that reality.
And frankly, can you blame him?
His Elland Road outburst was selfish and unreasonable, but if Salah was not selfish and unreasonable, he would have been just another talented kid who didn’t get the break he needed to get out of Egypt. If Salah wasn’t selfish and unreasonable, he wouldn’t have recovered from flopping at Chelsea to become one of the Premier League’s greatest-ever players.
But now he knows it is all over, and that Liverpool are prepared to move on without him.
When people say that it is lonely at the top – this is what they mean.
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