Champions League the aim for Salah over Golden Boot
Mohamed Salah’s interviews have been significantly less abundant than his goals for Liverpool this season, but just one sentence epitomised where his priorities lay, despite his record-breaking individual achievements.
“To win the Champions League,” Salah said. “I don’t care about the rest.” This was the first time Salah had spoken to the UK’S written press. Other than a handful of broadcasters, the publicity-shy “Egyptian King” has been reticent to grant an audience.
Salah may be a man of few words, but the humble 25-year-old proved to be a man of it, as he made good a promise to talk after he reached the milestone of 40 goals in all competitions against Bournemouth.
“Lucky,” a jocular Virgil van Dijk shouted at Salah as his Liverpool team-mate spoke to reporters deep in the bowels of Anfield’s new main stand. The corner of Salah’s mouth almost turned into a smile, but otherwise the Egyptian barely flinched as he delivered his words with the same seamless efficiency he shows on the pitch.
Pointedly Salah was definitive in his answers when it was put to him whether he would prefer to help Liverpool to a sixth European Cup or win a raft of personal accolades.
“To win the Champions League,” Salah said, with Liverpool’s twolegged semi-final against his former club Roma on the horizon.
“If you had a choice between the Champions League and [individual honours like the Golden Boot] then of course the Champions League.
“To win the Champions League is – I can’t say [how good]. To win the Champions League is huge.”
Salah scored Liverpool’s second against Bournemouth with a rare headed goal, as he deftly glanced the ball over Asmir Begovic from Trent Alexander-arnold’s searching ball from deep. Either side of it, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino – the other two maestros in Liverpool’s attacking triumvirate – found the net with clinical finishes.
This has been an individual season in which Salah has had Liverpool statistician Ged Rea working overtime, however the word “team” was the pre-eminent theme in his replies.
Salah had said “it means a lot” to reach 40 goals in a season and it is a “great feeling” as he became only the third Liverpool player alongside Ian Rush and Roger Hunt to accomplish the milestone. He is now closing in on Rush’s record tally of 47 goals in one campaign, achieved in the 1983-84 season.
Rush completed the feat in 65 games, but Salah would have a maximum of 52 matches.
“It’s also very close; it’s just seven goals. But let’s see!” Salah explained.
“I don’t know how many games there is to go, but we have the Premier League and semi-finals of the Champions League to play.”
Salah laughed loudly when questioned about his “Wooooooow really?” tweet in reference to Spurs striker Harry Kane’s appeal to have a goal against Stoke City credited to him in the battle to finish as the league’s top scorer.
“I don’t want to say anything!” Salah added. “In the end, they said it’s his goal, so it’s finished for me.
“Of course it [the Premier League Golden Boot] is in my mind. I cannot lie – it is in my mind.”
Bournemouth centre-back Nathan Ake gave an insight into the struggle opposition defenders face in trying to contain the quicksilver Salah. “It’s really, really difficult,” Ake said. “If there is no pressure on the ball, then he can make incredible movement in behind you.”
Van Dijk must have had some sympathy with fellow Dutchman Ake. Despite the Liverpool defender’s joke afterwards, he knows there is nothing fortunate about Salah’s brilliance.