London: The megastar-driven transfer mania that sends top players spinning to Real Madrid, Barcelona or Paris St-Germain is gaudily entertaining until your club is on the wrong end of it. Then it feels relentless and obscene.
And few clubs are on the wrong end of it as frequently as Liverpool, who have already pre-empted the predictable where-will-Mo-Salah-end-up saga by declaring: here, where he works, under contract, in a side with a bright future.
This briefing coincided with the first big wave of speculation about Salah being the obvious target for Europe’s wealthiest and most prestigious clubs, who have already lifted Javier Mascherano, Xabi Alonso, Luis Suarez and Philippe Coutinho from Anfield. Liverpool fans will, justifiably, rage against the premise that Salah’s flight from Merseyside is a historical inevitability, nine months into his Liverpool career, as if Barcelona and Real Madrid were the moon controlling the tide.
Every time Salah goes jinking through a Premier League defence to plant the ball in the net, a tortured debate resumes about where that brilliant goal might take him next.
Nothing is guaranteed to kill the pleasure of watching him play like the idea that his presence in a Liverpool shirt is temporary. No self-respecting club can be lumbered daily with the background noise that this or that star is merely passing through. No set of fans should be expected to accept that a brilliant striker in his first season at their club is bound to leave simply because Real and Barca start sending mind waves through the transfer universe.
Liverpool’s supporters had their fill of this with Coutinho, whose departure for 142 million pounds has not diminished Jurgen Klopp’s squad. Roberto Firmino, part of the side’s goalscoring trident, thinks it may even have improved the team by removing the “playmaker” and shifting the emphasis to speed and thrust.
Salah, though, is a different matter. Signed as a goalscoring winger, he has emerged as a prolific central striker who bamboozles defenders with his elusive running. The loose comparisons with Lionel Messi stem from his unpredictability — his skill in tight spaces. He is not quite in Messi’s class, of course, but those qualities raise players to a higher level of buy-ability. Certainly higher than Coutinho, an artistic player but not the kind of killer Salah has become.
Assuming any financial offer could be matched — and why could it not, with the Coutinho money still in the bank? — and Liverpool displayed “ambition” in next summer’s markets, a case could be made for Salah declining the chance to play second-fiddle to Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid or Messi at Barcelona. There is no other type of fiddle to play at those clubs, until one or both retire. As for PSG, a quick call to Neymar would dissuade him from joining a global branding operation that has made no headway in the Champions League.
It falls to Liverpool to give Salah reasons to stay. Knocking Manchester City out of the Champions League would be a start. So would buying well this summer. Salah has a stage that illuminates his talent and a manager who believes in building his team. He is appreciated in England in a way that he might not be in the megastar-heavy Spanish league.
Even if this turns out to be doomed romanticism, it’s worth the fight.
