Salah’s impact felt on field and in villages
Liverpool striker remains humble
Egypt – Deep in Egypt’s Nile Delta region, the children of Nagrig village have a clear goal in life: they want to become football stars like Mohamed Salah, England’s top scorer and Africa’s top player.
Salah, who is from their village, has been a Premier League sensation since joining Liverpool – setting a new Premier League score in a 38game campaign with 32 goals.
Salah, 25, grabbed the Golden Boot, and has won the Professional Footballers Association player of the year voted for by his fellow players.
But a shoulder injury in the Champions League final loss to Real Madrid has left Egyptians praying their star forward will be fit for the country’s first World Cup appearance in 28 years.
Salah cemented his status as a national hero in helping his country to qualify for the football showpiece. The team’s coach, Argentinian Hector Cuper, said the Pharaohs are banking on him in Russia.
Salah’s presence in the national team, fitness permitting, fulfils two objectives, said sports analyst Yasser Ayoub.
“The first is his personal performance and the goals he can score, and the second is that his presence provides the team an opportunity because the opposing teams assign players to monitor Salah,” explained Ayoub.
His success has become an inspiration for children in Egypt and Africa.
In Nagrig as well as in Basyoun, the closest town, the youth centres were renamed after the Egyptian star.
“His talent clearly showed from the beginning,” said Ghamri Abdel-Hameed elSaadani, who was the juniors coach at the Nagrig Youth Centre, where Salah started training at the age of eight.
The mayor of the village, Maher Shateyya, a family friend, bursts with pride when he talks about Nagrig’s most famous son.
“Mohamed was only 14 when he joined the Arab Contractors club in Cairo. He spent nearly 10 hours a day [travelling] to and from practice,” said Shateyya.
Salah grew up in a sporty family, with his father and two uncles having played football at the youth club in Nagrig.
Starting in the under-15s, Salah spent five years at Arab Contractors before he moved abroad to Swiss club Basel.
He then moved to Chelsea but failed to break into the first team. He went to Italy where eye-catching performances for Roma caught Liverpool’s attention and he signed last year in a deal that could eventually be worth £44-million.
Salah was raised in a traditional family where both his parents had government jobs.
Salah married Magi, a fellow Nagrig resident, when he was 20, and they have a girl named Makka. The Liverpool winger still spends his annual leave with his wife and daughter in Nagrig.
Among his donations is money used to build an intensive care unit at Basyoun Central Hospital, said Saadani.
“He is very modest... eightyear-old Mohamed is the same Mohamed [as he is now], Africa’s top player.”