Salah-Mania: Liverpools neuer Fußballgott
MOHAMED SALAH’S ROUTINE is familiar now. As the Liverpool Football Club stadium erupts joyously around him, celebrating yet another of the Egyptian’s goals, he runs to the fans closest to him, arms outstretched. He stands stock still, soaking in the adulation.
Once his teammates have congratulated him, he walks slowly back to the center circle. “Then there is this pause,” said Neil Atkinson, host of The Anfield Wrap, a Liverpool fans’ podcast, and a regular at the stadium.
Mr. Salah raises his hands to the sky and then kneels on the field, prostrating
himself in a demonstration of his Muslim faith. “The crowd goes a little quieter, allows him that moment of reflection,” Mr. Atkinson said. There is another roar as he stands up, “and then everyone celebrates again.”
Mr. Salah, 25, has been European soccer’s breakout star this season. He has scored 43 goals in 49 games in his first season at Liverpool. He has carried the team to its first Champions League final
in more than a decade. He has been voted England’s player of the year both by his fellow players and by the Football Writers’ Association.
His faith — and his public displays of it — have also made him a figure of considerable social and cultural significance. At a time when Britain is fighting rising Islamophobia, when government policy has been to create a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants, he is a North African and a Muslim who is not just accepted in Britain, but adored.
“He is someone who embodies Islam’s values and wears his faith on his sleeve,” said Miqdaad Versi, the assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. “He has a likability. He is the hero of the team. Liverpool, in particular, has rallied around him in a really positive way. He is not the solution to Islamophobia, but he can play a major role.”
In Egypt, Mr. Salah’s status as a national treasure was confirmed in October last year, when his nerveless last-minute penalty kick secured the country’s national team a place in this summer’s World Cup, its first appearance at the tournament since 1990. Mr. Salah, grinning deliriously, was carried around the stadium in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on fans’ shoulders.
His face adorns countless walls in Cairo. A mural of him outside a cafe in downtown
Cairo has become a tourist attraction. The city’s markets offer his image on everything from bed linen to lanterns.
The Premier League, and European soccer in general, has always been popular in Egypt, but now thousands pack Cairo’s coffee shops and shisha bars to watch Liverpool’s games.
“No Egyptian has done what Mohamed has done, which is why his rise is so important to the public,” said Ahmed Atta, an Egyptian soccer analyst. “Everyone is watching the Premier League now. Social media is awash with pictures of him.”
Mr. Salah’s popularity is not just the result of his prowess on the field; just as important is his philanthropy. He donated a dialysis machine to a hospital in Nagrig, paid for land to build a sewage treatment plant and renovated a public sports center, a school and a mosque. “He is constantly donating money to charities and to his hometown,” said Said Elshishiny, the coach who discovered his talent as a child in Nagrig, a town in the Nile Delta. “It is enough to make anyone adore him.”
That he sees no need to disguise his faith only fuels his popularity. “People love the fact that he is not scared of kneeling in prayer in front of everyone in a non-Muslim country at a time of rising Islamophobia,” Mr. Atta said. “It is like a victory to them.”
It feels the same way to the Muslim community — from Syrian, Yemeni and Bangladeshi backgrounds — on Merseyside, the region that includes Liverpool. “Muslims are under pressure” in Britain, said Abu Usamah Atthababi, imam of Al Masra mosque in Toxteth, an inner- city district of Liverpool.
In recent years, police figures suggest that hate crimes toward Muslims have been rising across the country, with spikes in religiously motivated hate crimes after terror attacks in and around Paris in 2015, in London in 2016 and 2017, and in Manchester, England, in 2017. A report by the charity Tell MAMA last year suggested that Islamophobic attacks rose by 47 percent in 2016.
Liverpool considers itself more welcoming than many places in Britain: a “city of outsiders, an anti- establishment city,” as Mr. Atkinson put it. Mr. Atthababi pointed out that the city “has a long history of diversity and celebrating that diversity.”
Still, the police had to increase security at mosques in Liverpool after the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The Merseyside police force recorded a 75 percent increase in hate crimes from 2012 to 2016.
Mr. Salah has helped “turn that pressure off,” Mr. Atthababi said. Songs in his honor boom out at Anfield, Liverpool’s home stadium, and fans carry flags bearing his image, complete with Pharaonic headdress. He is mobbed wherever he goes.
That is natural in a city defined as much by its two soccer teams (Everton being the other) as it is by its being the hometown of the Beatles. But the fact that it is a Muslim being feted is significant, too.
“Every Muslim is proud of him,” said Ali Aden, selling groceries and perfumes from his stall outside Al Rahma Mosque in Liverpool. “Sometimes, we are made to feel like second- class citizens. For someone to come from the Middle East to our city is a great source of pride.”
One song in his honor has the lyrics, “If he scores another few, then I’ll be Muslim, too,” and it has not gone unnoticed. Though the chant has attracted some criticism, Anwar Uddin, a former player who now works for the Football Supporters’ Feder-
Tearing down cultural barriers by scoring a lot of goals.
ation on its diversity programming, says he thinks it is well intentioned.
“Things like that can break down barriers,” he said. He pointed out that just seeing Mr. Salah bow and reflect after scoring a goal can help to “remove the stigma” that some may attach to the sight of a Muslim praying.
“He can help to bridge the Muslim community and the rest of the city,” Mr. Atthababi said. “He can show people that we are closer to Salah than we are to extremists.”
To others, the message Mr. Salah’s success sends to Muslims is as im- portant, because he made his triumphant return to England four years after being buried on the bench for a season at Chelsea.
“He gives more confidence to the younger generation especially,” said Radwan Albarbandi, a doctor from Syria who now lives in Liverpool. “They are more active, more outgoing, their morale is higher. He has shown that if you engage, if you work hard and prove yourself, nobody is going to stop you praying, nobody is going to stop you wearing a beard. People will respect you, whoever you are.”