The Liverpool goal machine tearing up English soccer—again
Summary
Mohamed Salah has scored or assisted nearly two-thirds of his team’s goals this season. It’s no coincidence that his team is running away with the Premier League title.
Mohamed Salah has grown accustomed to being called washed up.
It might seem strange in retrospect—now that Salah is the deadliest striker in the English Premier League—but before he was a Liverpool superstar, he was a serial bust.
A decade ago, when the Egyptian forward was at Chelsea, his days in English soccer seemed finished right as they began. Salah was so ineffective that the club loaned him out to Italian teams twice in two seasons. Then, once he moved to Roma permanently, he was viewed as a good-but-not-great winger who wasted as many scoring chances as he converted. By the time Liverpool signed Salah for more than $50 million in 2017, the club’s American co-owner, John W. Henry, couldn’t quite believe how much he was paying for him.
“It seemed like a lot of euros at the time!" Henry said in a 2018 interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Even last season, despite years of wild success in the Premier League, Salah had fans asking whether he was past his prime. He posted his lowest goal tally since joining Liverpool. He often looked visibly frustrated. And with the club preparing for life under a new head coach, Liverpool appeared ready to do the unthinkable: Ship Mo Salah out the door.
But when no acceptable deal materialized, the 32-year-old reported back to Merseyside for at least one more season. It’s turning out to be the greatest season of his career.
“We didn’t know Salah could get any better," first-year Liverpool coach Arne Slot said, “ but somehow he has."
Salah leads the league in both goals and assists and it’s no surprise that his club currently holds a six-point lead over Arsenal in the standings. These two facts are inextricably linked. Salah has either scored or assisted 30 times in 19 league games, meaning he’s been involved in a staggering 64% of Liverpool’s Premier League goals halfway through the season. His latest strike came from the penalty spot on Sunday in a 2-2 draw against Manchester United.
“Mo’s in an incredible place in a very good team that gives him opportunities at the moment," Slot said this month. “And he’s able to do special things…His finishing is so clinical."
In fact, it’s more clinical than ever. Salah is posting numbers that he hasn’t managed since his first explosive campaign in English soccer seven years ago. He is converting 24.3% of his shots, according to Opta Sports, a full six points better than Manchester City’s leading striker Erling Haaland.
Precisely what changed about his game is difficult to pinpoint, but what’s clear is that Salah has found unparalleled levels of efficiency since Slot took over. Seven years under manager Jürgen Klopp had proven to be long enough for Liverpool’s style to sharpen, win a Premier League title, and ultimately begin to go stale. And Salah freely admits that he was ready to play for a new boss.
“We all needed fresh air," he told French broadcaster Canal+.
Though he’s averaging fewer total touches per game than he did under Klopp, Salah is running riot from the right flank of Liverpool’s attack and changing the course of matches. Anything he has lost in pure pace he has made up for with even more judicious runs into the opposing box, where defenders struggle to work out whether he’s about to pass or shoot.
The only awkward part about Salah’s charmed season is that it’s shaping up to be his last on Merseyside. His contract is due to expire next summer and Salah says that he has yet to receive an offer to extend. Still, he insists that the lingering doubt over his future isn’t taking his mind off the task at hand. Liverpool remains in the hunt for all four major trophies—and Salah is making the point that he’s far from finished.
“Do you want to look back and say, ‘I was concerned about the contract or stressed?’" he asked himself in an interview with Sky Sports. “Or do you want to just say, ‘OK, I had an unbelievable season.’"
Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com
