LIVERPOOL – If you want to find a place on planet earth with a positive and cheerful atmosphere, you should probably avoid the red part of football Liverpool.
Liverpool’s crisis has taken on serious contours, one win in the last six competitive matches and manager Arne Sloto’s conflict with Mohamed Salah, the team’s biggest star, who did not even travel to today’s Champions League match against Inter Milan.
Salah has spent two of the last three meetings only on the bench, coming off the bench early in the second half in the 2-2 home draw with Sunderland. The 33-year-old Egyptian is not used to sitting on the bench and after Saturday’s points distribution in Leeds, he opened his mouth for a walk and there is already speculation whether he will go to Saudi Arabia in the winter.
Jamie Carragher also commented on the long-term supporter of LFC, who definitely did not spare him. The former Liverpool captain mainly blames him for his selfishness and called his comments a scandal. He also told him that he had not won anything before coming to Anfield and that football is not an individual sport.
“I think what he did after the Leeds game was a scandal. Some people called it an emotional outburst. I don’t think it was. I think every time Salah comes into the mix, which he’s done four times in the eight years he’s been at Liverpool, it’s a choreography with him and his agent to cause as much mischief as possible and strengthen his own position.” thinks the former 23-year-old and LFC captain.
Salah’s outburst was not the first, during the era of Jürgen Klopp, he had an exit during the match against West Ham, when he reacted quite inappropriately to the substitution, after which he went off the field. On the one hand, the soccer player’s angry reaction is understandable, because everyone wants to play, on the other hand, the coach is the boss and he decides which 11 players will fight for points on the pitch. The player must respect whatever the captain decides.
Salah also appeared in front of the media a year ago when he was in lengthy negotiations with Liverpool about a new contract.
“He did that 12 months ago and I criticized him for it at the time. He played on the strings of the LFC fans. Liverpool were top of the table, they scored the winning goal at Southampton and that was the time he came in and put pressure on the club’s owners. He did the same this weekend and I think he was waiting for a bad result for Liverpool. The fans, the manager and everyone at the club feel they are down – and he chose this moment to attack the manager and maybe cause his throwing out,” Carragher said on Monday Night Football on Sky Sports.
Is ego Salah’s enemy?
Salah’s situation is somewhat reminiscent of former NBA superstar Carmelo Anthony. During his time in Denver and New York, he had the team’s number one man position paved, but after being traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder, he was the third wheel on the wagon behind Russell Westbrook and Paul George. When reporters asked him at the preseason press conference what he would say about coming off the bench to help the team, he balked and unanimously rejected such a possibility.
Over time, however, he understood that he can be more beneficial for the team as a sixth man from the substitutes, and in the 2020/21 season as a Portland player, he even finished in seventh place in the voting for the best substitute.
Athletes in general, not only football players, often at the end of their careers struggle with their own ego and the impression that they are the most useful for the team only if they play the whole game and have a hard time accepting the fact that the team no longer stands only on their shoulders.
“We’re talking about the egos of players like that – Ronaldo, Messi, Mbappé, Salah. They feel that the club’s success is all about them. And that becomes a problem in the situation Liverpool are in now. When Mo Salah talks about how many goals he’s scored – ‘I’ve scored more than anyone else in the Premier League’ – he’s always talking about himself.”
I fly and, and, and!
Carragher did not leave a dry thread on Salah and also returned to his time in Chelsea, who bought him in 2014 from FC Basel for 16.5 million euros, but he did not make an impact in London. When he arrived in the summer of 2017 from AS Roma to Liverpool, many turned up their noses at the transfer fee of 42 million euros. Klopp took him to a new level and today no one will say half a bad word.
“I would remind Salah and his agent that before he came to Liverpool he was known as a man who failed at Chelsea. He had never won a major trophy before. He is also the greatest footballer in the history of Egypt. Egypt is the most successful country in the African Cup of Nations. Salah is leaving in a few weeks.
And Salah has never won the AFCON. I’m not saying this to put him down. He is one of the best players of the last eight years, very few footballers have been better. But it shows him and his agent that success is not about the individual.
You weren’t a big star before Liverpool. You won nothing with Egypt. No matter how great a player you are, you need the help of your teammates, coach and fans. It is very important that he realizes this. Because when he talks after the match, it’s just ‘me, me, me’,” finished Carragher.
- Author: © List/ Ondrej Herceg
- Source: Sports, Sky Sports
