Salah’s Messi-like genius deserved the last word
Liverpool ace’s brilliant individual second goal was a moment of triumph cruelly cut short
Lionel Messi is invoked only in extreme circumstances. Comparisons are usually odious. But there was no denying Mohamed Salah’s right to place his second goal against Tottenham Hotspur alongside the brilliance in tight spaces of Barcelona’s master of escapology.
The goal Salah scored in added time of a game decided by impromptu refereeing reviews would have sent Liverpool’s fans home feeling they had seen a thing of beauty. The joy, though, did not last. Moments after Salah had moved to 21 Premier League goals for the season – an extraordinary return for a so-called winger – Kane secured his 100th in England’s top division with a penalty that was not, but then was, after Edward Smart, the assistant referee, had imparted his own wisdom to Jon Moss, the chief arbiter. Salah’s brief taste of glory deserved a bit longer in the limelight.
Collecting the ball on the right side of the Tottenham penalty box, Salah started using his feet as pinball flippers as he jinked through and round four defenders, who were so bamboozled they started shifting in the wrong directions as Salah surged through.
Conventional logic was telling them to expect particular movements from Liverpool’s top scorer. In such moments, however, the best players are improvising madly, and there was something of Messi’s unpredictability in the way Salah slithered through to squeeze a shot past Hugo Lloris from a tight angle.
Lloris appeared no more confident than his defence of working out what Salah’s feet were doing. When the ball flashed into the net, Salah had the match in his pocket.
Liverpool led 2-1 with minutes, seconds, of added time remaining. Game over, surely. And the stakes were high. The race for fourth, so often a contrivance, this year brings genuine excitement. Spurs and Liverpool, highly entertaining sides, are in a fight to see which is the most progressive – the most authentic – and have been joined by Chelsea in the tussle behind Manchester’s two big outfits.
Salah scored at the start and the end of a game full of thrills and talking points (shouting points, really). Three minutes in, he floated on to an errant back-pass by Eric Dier with only Lloris to beat. Sounds easy, but the execution was sweeping and precise, as Jurgen Klopp, his manager pointed out.
“The first one was so cool, to get the ball there [in the corner], with or without the goalkeeper,” Klopp said. “And the second one was so difficult to defend, because everyone in the stadium – and his teammates – was expecting the pass. In the end he did it by himself.
“It was a fantastic goal, an outstanding performance. He was a danger and a threat throughout.”
The value of this threat can hardly be overstated. In this Liverpool side, Salah is the one who makes defenders twitch and sweat. Notionally a left-footed outside right, he has mastered the art of making runs across the forward line. They are rarely straight-line.
He plants doubt in the minds of defenders by swaying and veering as he sprints, so they can never decide where he might be heading. The old term “back-pedalling” comes into play. Defenders run backwards in a crouch position,