After Cody Gakpo managed to work the ball to him inside the penalty area, Mohamed Salah dragged it onto his right foot to create space for a shot and then slammed it off the underside of the crossbar, putting Liverpool 5-1 up against Toulouse in stoppage time. In doing so, he became the record scorer for an English club in major European cup competitions with 43 goals, surpassing Thierry Henry (42).
Salah’s magnificent start to the 2023/24 season continues. In 12 appearances so far, he’s netted time times and set up four more, averaging a direct goal contribution every 66 minutes.
He’s been more involved in the Europa League than you might expect given his importance in the squad as the perennial top scorer and the extent of Liverpool’s superiority over its Group E opponents. Rather than getting a night or two off, Salah has featured in all three games.
He came off the bench 74th minute against LASK on matchday one, and the 70th minute on Thursday night. Most surprisingly of all, Klopp named him in the starting line-up for the intervening clash with Union SG even as he made nine changes from the previous Premier League game.
Salah would come off at half-time that day, but he’s still played more minutes in the tournament (81) than other key first-team players like Alexis Mac Allister (73), Dominik Szoboszlai (40) and Andy Robertson (zero), who have been afforded greater rest.
In fact, across the board, the only match in which he hasn’t featured so far is the 3-1 Carabao Cup win over Leicester, where he was left out of the squad entirely. No Reds played has made more appearances than Salah so far this season, with Szoboszlai and Darwin Núñez the only two to match his tally of 12.
If you saw him on the bench, he wants to play — always!” he said. “But he enjoyed coming on and scoring the goal. He is growing with the role he has for us and to show that to stay on the top level, it is nice to enjoy the moment and then go again.”
He later added: “If we would really scan him, the majority of the bones are 19 or 20 because he keeps himself in such good shape. Mo understands the spaces and he knows how players react on him. If he cannot score, he can still be a threat for us which is super important. I cannot compare Mo to other 30-odd-year-old players because I don’t think biologically he is.”
To put it another way, Salah is still in phenomenal condition, and that explains why he’s maintained his world-beating output when many might have anticipated the onset of a decline. After Saudi Pro League club Al-Ittihad tabled a giant offer worth up to $182m (£150m/€172m) on the final day of last summer’s transfer window (via Sky Sports), there was a feeling in some quarters that Liverpool simply had to accept it given that Salah was growing older.
But you can throw out the rulebook and ditch the conventional wisdom when it comes to Salah. While it was a big call to offer him a record-breaking new deal in 2022, the signs are that he still has plenty of years at the very top, and that’s why Liverpool sees no need to hold him back. Its recent use of Salah instead strongly hints that it will do everything to tie him down to another multi-year extention, enshrining his role as the team’s most important player for the foreseeable future. It certainly should be.
