Yesterday, Mo Salah announced that he would be leaving Liverpool at the end of this season, bringing his nine-year stay at the club to an end. Salah will undoubtably go down as one of the most iconic Liverpool players of all time. He scored 255 goals (4th all time) and registered 122 assists (5th all time), and for the stat nerds reading this, those totals even out to a goal or assist every 94 minutes during his time at the club which is truly extraordinary. (all stats are as of publishing)
It is impossible to deny the success Salah has achieved during his time at Liverpool, both individually, and also as part of the team. Along with his eye-popping stats, Salah also won 8 trophies at the club. Including two Premier League titles, and a Champions League trophy. But outside of the hard facts and numbers, what will be interesting about Salah in the coming years is how he is remembered by football fans on the whole.
In many ways, Mo Salah is a microcosm of what modern football is, and his legacy will likely reflect that. He was never the most aesthetically pleasing footballer, but he was always one of the most effective. His goal scoring and playmaking numbers are evidence of that. In simple terms, Salah is a specialist. A true, and undeniable goal threat. And as teams become more tactically advanced and well-drilled, managers can afford to deploy true specialists to carry out very specific roles.
Salah is good at what he’s good at, and outside of that you may be left a little underwhelmed. But for the most part, that has not been an issue because he was so good at scoring and creating goals. This season we’ve seen what happens when a specialist regresses in the areas they build their game around, and it has resulted in his worst season at Liverpool by a massive margin. Whether or not this season has an impact on the way he is remembered is still yet to be seen, but it has shown us that even the best players can come back down to earth at some point.
As most elite players are, Salah has been compared to other elite players in the Premier League, and this will continue well into his time outside of the league too. For some, the output is enough to consider him as one of the greatest forwards in Premier League history, with some deeming him the greatest winger to ever play in the league. Those who see Salah in that light will be met by those who view his specialist nature and lack of aesthetics as a reason to dispute the strength of the numbers, and hold him out of those kinds of conversations. Players like Eden Hazard and Cristiano Ronaldo might not have had the same level of output that Salah has, but they were in some ways more complete footballers, and thus they are held in higher regard than the Egpytian.
But Mo Salah’s Liverpool legacy is just as much about numbers as it is about something much bigger than numbers. Yes, he set personal records in a red shirt, but his arrival at Liverpool marked a turning point for a club that had, for a long time, struggled to get over the line in big competitions. His first season (2017/18) saw the Reds reach a Champions League final for the first time since 2007. In that same season he set a new record for Premier League goals scored in a 38 game season with 32. The following year, Liverpool did one better as they won the Champions League. They followed that up by winning the Premier League in the very next year – the club’s first ever Premier League win, and first league title for 30 years.
It is because of players like Salah that Liverpool fans have become relatively entitled nowadays. They expect their team to win. Coming 3rd or 4th is now a bad season. Before Salah’s tenure, Liverpool fans were simply happy to play European football. His excellence, professionalism and true effectiveness completely changed the culture of the club, and that is much bigger than numbers or aesthetics.
Liverpool have had beautiful footballers over the years, such as Phillipe Coutinho and Luis Suarez, but it was Salah that spearheaded the club’s first true period of success in decades. He may not dribble like Hazard, shoot like Ronaldo, or pass like De Bruyne, but he found a unique way to still be effective in those areas, and won like a true legend. How people remember Salah will be interesting, but regardless of what we like in a player personally, we cannot and should not discredit the way Salah flat-out won.
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