Salah - the beginning of the end
Managing Mo's decline will be Liverpool's real challenge
Mohamed Salah has reached the top of the tree. Only one way you go from there, I’m afraid.
Giving him a new contract is simply giving yourself the problem of trying to break his fall. And gravity is rarely denied.
If managing his inevitable decline does prove to be a problem, it’s one Liverpool really had to take on. Casting him adrift would have been like killing James Bond. His impact these last 8 years has put him in statue territory. Great is an overused word in football but Salah has been bloody great for Liverpool.
He has not played particularly well for a month or so now. The greatest season in Premier League history has gone cold. He’s scored 2 penalties in his last 7 games.
In a number of those games he has even been a candidate for the hook but Arne Slot has substituted him once in the last 11 matches. That was in Paris where Harvey Elliott came on in his place and scored the night’s winner. Taking off the Premier League’s leading scorer and assists provider is not a decision you take lightly, particularly not with his contract running down.
It’s a decision Slot will need to make more frequently if Salah stays.
Substituting Salah is not made easier by the fact that he’s a sulk. It takes one to know one and Mo – like me – doesn’t take kindly to being removed from his work station in full public view. My lip’s been curled for going on 5 years now!
One of the reasons that handing him a new contract was a no-brainer is that he’s still as fit as Joe Wicks. Salah is two months shy of his 33rd birthday but he just doesn’t ever do injury. For a man whose job is to continually dodge a hail of flying studs and elbows, his annual attendance record is remarkable.
Liverpool have looked a weary team at times in recent weeks with several players in more need of rest and rotation than Salah. The dash and dazzle stars of the football flanks are inconsistent as a breed. It is not unusual or unreasonable for the wide boys to have spells in a season where they seem peripheral and occasional. Mo has always come again. He’s stayed untouchable.
But, in a strange kind of way, it’s the standards that he’s set and the legend he’s written that might become the complication for Slot from here. Some men get better with age but not the ones that run around for a living. The very history that Salah has made in going past Dalglish and Gerrard on Liverpool’s list of legendary goal scorers is the thing that tells us he must be past his peak.
Mo might still be able to beat a full-back but he can’t beat time. Convincing him of that will actually be made harder by his stature, his evergreen fitness, the love he gets from the Kop and beyond.
Pep Guardiola has spent the season trying to manage the clock that is ticking ever more loudly on City’s senior and serial winners. The likes of Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva have certainly earned the enduring faith he has shown in them - earned it in pieces of silver and gold medals. The trouble was Pep had too many favourite sons growing old together. Kyle Walker suddenly started to live up to his name.
I don’t know to what degree it was truly his own decision but it’s interesting that Kevin De Bruyne is the one that appears to have voluntarily called time on his City career. As independently individual in mind as he’s been in his playing excellence, De Bruyne is not the kind to settle for being used as a bit-part player.
If Salah signs on for 2 more years, it’s almost unavoidable that he will be reduced to some cameo roles before the contract is up. Who’s going to tell him?
He has never been slow to show his displeasure at being replaced when either Slot or Jurgen Klopp before him have told Salah his number is up. Managers tend to pass off vexed body language as a good sign in a substituted player but it might be a different matter if such a famous sad face is catching the camera’s eye in the row behind you. How will Mo react to starting games on the bench?
It is impossible to climb to the summit of such a competitive sport without Trumpian reserves of self-worth. Call it ‘ego’ if you must but it’s an essential to singling yourself out as an elite footballer. That same certainty that Salah has shown time and time again in one-on-ones with goalkeepers is surely a feature of his negotiating position when the door closes on him and the boss.
Negotiating football royalty down the dark side of their career graph is the ultimate test of man-management. Messi didn’t enjoy his ‘down’ time at PSG. He got booed towards the end. United didn’t enjoy lowering Ronaldo from his lofty perch. He actually refused to go on from the bench against Spurs one day.
Salah is outwardly too humble by nature to descend into hissy fits but the harsh reality is that grey hairs are sprouting in that famous beard and no amount of silver shimmering conditioner is going to wash away the teenage full-back who is chasing you. This will be his last Liverpool contract.
There was always going to be an offer. No club can afford to lose superstars for free. I imagine it is heavily incentivised in search of some kind of financial sense and value. It was a different calculation when the Saudis started waving petrodollars at Liverpool two summers ago and Salah was only a year into his contract. The return on resisting those overtures will almost certainly be a 20th league title.
Short of kidnapping Lamine Yamal, the club could never have hoped to replace Mo to the satisfaction of Liverpool fans this time. They had to keep him. Or try anyway. Never mind the head, the hearts were saying he is too precious, iconic, adored.
Salah’s place in those Liverpool hearts will hopefully protect him from any disillusioned criticism if and when his bar starts to wobble and slide. His own heart will no doubt remain as big as ever. It’s big heads that can cause problems for managers, though.
Arne Slot will be charged with making hard-headed judgments about how best to use what is left of Mohamed Salah’s unique talents. Of Mo’s 243 Liverpool goals, only 32 have been scored on his watch. The rest are history. This season’s tally will soon be history too. Not forgotten but gone.
His next autograph will mark the sign of a new chapter for Salah but there is no escaping the fact that it will also be the beginning of the end.