Mohamed Salah honoured
LONDON. - Liverpool’s Egyptian forward Mohamed Salah has been voted Player of the Year by the Football Writers’ Association, completing a sweep of England’s individual prizes.
Salah was chosen as player of the year by the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) after an outstanding season in which he has scored 43 goals in all competitions.
The 25-year-old is the first African player to win the prestigious award.
Salah has helped Liverpool, who are third in the Premier League, into the Champions League semifinals for the first time in 10 years.
The Merseyside club face AS Roma in the second leg in the Italian capital on Wednesday and lead 5-2 from the opening game at Anfield in which Salah scored twice and set up two other goals. Salah will head to the World Cup in Russia to play for Egypt who have been drawn with the hosts, Saudi Arabia and Uruguay in Group A.
Meanwhile, an image rights storm that has seen star Salah lash out at Egyptian football authorities is on the way to being settled, the Liverpool playmaker has signalled.
The dispute has centred on an advertising campaign by the national team’s main sponsor, Telecom Egypt’s mobile arm WE, which has relied heavily on photos of Salah, who has his own contract with global telecom giant Vodafone. An initial hint of major discord came on April 20, when Salah’s representative Ramy Abbas Issa tweeted “we are having a very serious issue with the Egyptian Football Association”.
Salah had signalled his growing frustration earlier on Sunday by tweeting “unfortunately the way it is being dealt with is very insulting. I was hoping the interaction would be classier than this.”
Issa on Saturday complained that he and Salah had not even been contacted by the EFA. “Complete silence! What’s the plan?! We just see more and more billboards and ads coming out which we have never authorised!” he tweeted.
But on Sunday Egypt’s Minister of Youth and Sports Khaled Abd Elaziz announced that “an agreement has been reached” with the football association “to carry out all the requests” by Salah. - Reuters.