Mohamed Salah: From rescuing Roma to revitalizing Liverpool
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND — His departure rescued Roma. His arrival revitalized Liverpool.
When the two clubs meet over two legs in the Champions League semifinals, the matches will also serve as a celebration of Mohamed Salah, a player who means more to Roma and Liverpool than they could ever have imagined.
The Egypt winger left Roma for Liverpool in June last year for 42 million euros ($50 million). In an off-season when the Premier League spent record sums and Neymar would soon go on to change the sport’s financial landscape by joining Paris SaintGermain for 222 million euros, Salah’s transfer wasn’t unnoticed but was hardly agendasetting. It has proved a significant piece of business.
For Roma, it helped balance the club’s books, erasing a chunk of its deficit when the Italian side was facing potential financial fair play penalties from UEFA.
“Anyone who understands a bit of this business knows that that’s like having a sword pointed at your neck,” said Ramon “Monchi” Rodriguez, Roma’s director of sport and essentially its mastermind in the transfer market.
Selling Salah was a wrench. He combined for 26 goals (scored 15, set up 11) in Serie A in the final season of his 18 months in the Italian capital, second only to Jose Callejon of Napoli. He had quickly become a fan favourite. The then-Roma coach, Luciano Spalletti, had helped develop Salah’s all-around game so he was more than just a speedy winger, but an efficient and creative one, too.
As it turned out, $50 million was a bargain.
On Sunday, Salah collected the Player of the Year award in English soccer, which is voted by his fellow professionals, after a stunning first season at Liverpool in which he has scored 41 goals in all competitions. He hasn’t failed to score in 2018 in a home league game at Anfield, where supporters idolize him and serenade him with songs. He is regarded as a national hero by soccer-crazed Egyptian fans and murals of him adorn walls in Cairo.
Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp has run out of superlatives to describe Salah but deserves credit for finding a way to get the best out of him. Starting matches as virtually a right winger, Salah regularly drifts inside and finds himself playing as the central striker, with Roberto Firmino — nominally Liverpool’s centre forward — dropping deeper to link up play and create space.
His trademark finish for much of the season saw him cut inside and curl a shot into the far corner. He has also developed the cheeky dink over the goalie from the penalty box. He did that at Etihad Stadium to score the goal against Manchester City that sealed Liverpool’s place in the Champions League semifinals.
Fate ensured Roma would be Salah’s next opponent in the competition.
The Italian side, now under coach Eusebio Di Francesco, also somehow managed to prosper without Salah, getting to the last four of Europe’s top competition for the first time since reaching the final in 1984. The opponent that year: Liverpool.
Di Francesco has tried several players in Salah’s role as an attacking winger on the right, with varying degrees of success. However, it is 20-year-old Cengiz Under who is proving a revelation in that role in the second half of his first season at the club. He came off the bench in the second leg of the quarter-finals against Barcelona and delivering the corner that set up Kostas Manolas’ goal to seal a 3-0 win and historic comeback from 4-1 down in the first leg.