Salah’s Private Nature and Carefully Controlled Image

This is an abridged version; the full article is available on our ‘It Was Always… Liverpool’ Substack page:

You sense there’s been a change in Mo Salah. For most of his eight years at Liverpool, he’s been a little distant, as if he’s above all the nonsense that’s associated with football.

The Egyptian king has always been very private. When you contact the club about a potential interview, the first thing you’re told is, “Not Salah, he doesn’t do stuff like this.” He’s always given the impression that he has his image on a very tight rein. For the most part, only what happens on the pitch has been shared with the fans. The rest belongs to Salah and is off limits.

“He has a great sense of his own status,” is how it was once explained to me. I could see how you could come to that conclusion but I always wondered whether that was approaching things from the wrong perspective. Did Salah understand his status? Had he grasped the power that a goalscorer and superstar wields? Perhaps he did and just didn’t care about it.

Leadership Decisions and Salah’s Distance from the Armband

It wasn’t surprising when Arne Slot named Andy Robertson as vice-captain to Virgil van Dijk. The Scot and the Dutchman have obvious leadership qualities. Salah? He looked like a man who just wanted to get on with his own game.