Era 01: Salah, The Egyptian King
How, in the span of one Premier League season, Mohamed Salah became Scouse royalty
Player: Mohamed Salah
Era: ‘The Egyptian King’
Period: 2017/18
Club: Liverpool F.C.
Intro
From the 27th June 2017 to the 26th May 2018, Mohamed Salah completed a journey few players in football have managed. In under a year he went from standard, talented winger to global superstar. This era covers his ascension to fan-bestowed moniker ‘The Egyptian King’.
Liverpool were just about course corrected after a season and a half under the stewardship of Jürgen Klopp. Everything was now pointing in the right direction but a few gaps in the squad remained. The club needed a new winger and opted for Salah.
Earlier in his career he was playing well and winning leagues for FC Basel, which led to Chelsea giving him a short stint in London. However they had a desperate Mourinho in charge and as is his way, he cut loose anything and anyone who did not equal immediate success. In this case it meant he showed a young Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah the door. This sent Mo on a short odyssey to Serie A where he graced Fiorentina and then Roma with his still unheralded talents. Lighting up Rome meant that the stats department at Liverpool knew they had to go big and go quick for a player that had already gotten used to the physicality of the Premier League and was now showing the potential to be a superstar.
On the 27th June 2017 Salah arrived at Liverpool for a fee that would rise to £43million and eventually become one of the all time bargains. As signings go it was nothing more than a mild eyebrow raiser, the club had brought Sadio Mané in the previous Summer and he had proven to be an instant success. For this luck to happen twice in a row would be unheard of so the hopes for Salah were a bit muted. I was hopeful the club had another solid performer on the books who would be capable of getting up and down the pitch and executing the high intensity approach of the manager. As it turned out, he was capable of fulfilling my narrow expectations and so much more.
As his season was filled with great moments, I’ve picked out a few that stick in my memory. Each one is indicative of a particular reason he became unstoppable.
Arsenal
In the third game of the season Liverpool welcomed Arsenal to Anfield and cruised to a four nil win in the remnants of the Summer sun. This game contained a moment that perfectly encapsulated the Salah of this period; a zippy, turbo-boosted finisher who would terrorise defences for years to come.
With Liverpool two nil up, Arsenal are pressing for a way back into the game. They’ve pushed too high and left their half of the pitch completely empty. Salah wins a header, gets the ball under control and gets to race away from the rest of the match which is left in his wake, pursuing him like an angry mob. Sadio Mané bends his chasing run across the path of the two Arsenal defenders, allowing Mo a clean route. He surges upfield towards the Kop like a runaway race car and slots the ball past the helpless Petr Cech.
Liverpool release a highlights package after most home games called ‘Inside Anfield’. It shows tunnel footage before and after games and the teams getting on and off their bus. The edition released after this match captured a moment that framed this breakaway in the best possible way. The camera is deep in the tunnel looking out towards the sunny day. We can see two club employees and a police officer standing in the tunnel watching the action, silhouetted against the brightness of the day. Opposite us is what was then ‘The Centenary Stand’ (it was renamed The Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand two months later) basking in the shade of the hot day. The red sides of the tunnel lead our eye into the only narrow rectangle of sunlit bright green pitch we can see, the single point perspective of it all lends the scene a tinge of Kubrick. The white marking of the halfway line rises directly up and away from us, disappearing in the flattened horizon our ground level viewpoint affords us. It’s like being huddled in the curtains at the side of a stage watching a play unfold.
When Salah wins his header off screen to start the counter, there is no one in the rectangle of pitch we can see, but the crowd all roar and stand to their feet. Suddenly Mo races past, from the left to right, like someone sprinting by your living room window, and he’s gone. Then Sadio Mané follows, leading the chasing pack of panicked Arsenal defenders, and they’re gone. As more players chase back, left to right, we hear the stadium erupt as offscreen, Salah has scored in front of an adoring Kop.
The image of him leading an entire team like Roadrunner outpacing Wile E. Coyote always stuck in my mind as the perfect image of his threat in that first season. That burst of acceleration allowed him the extra split second to choose the decision that would make the difference.
Everton
The Merseyside Derby took place on a dark Sunday afternoon at an Anfield powdered with a lightly falling snow. This was the first time Salah was taking part in the heated local rivalry and expectations for his impact were high. With three months of Premier League play and 12 goals behind him, the home fans were quietly hoping for something memorable from the free scoring winger. Anything achieved in this game would be multiplied in satisfaction by the fact it was a) against Everton and b) would be scored past Jordan Pickford. It turned out to be the most memorable goal scored across the world in the 17/18 season and would go on to win the 2018 Puskas award. The stature boost from winning this was passed on to the club itself. The last player to win a high profile world award of this magnitude was Michael Owen in 2001 with a Ballon d’Or. An example of the Mo Salah effect in action.
In what would come to be seen as his trademark finish, Salah muscled his way through some Everton defenders at the corner of the box and jinked past another. The touch that took the ball away from the last defender rolled neatly into his path and allowed him to hit the shot, left footed, first time. This finish, the curled instep finish, into the far top corner past a flailing midair goalie, is the most aesthetically pleasing goal in football. It combines three great elements; the top corner, a delicate curl and a shot that sails through the air. There’s inventiveness, there’s boldness, there’s skill. I see these goals and I think to myself ‘this is why I watch the game’.
Even though it won the Puskas Award, it turned out this was a dry run for an even better execution against an even better goalie later in the season. Facing his previous club AS Roma in the Champions League semi-final, Salah had the same finish from the same spot on the pitch. This time it clips the crossbar as it goes in, instantly adding to the beauty. Alisson Becker didn’t stand a chance.
Tottenham
As the record breaking season progressed, I kept expecting opposition teams to figure out how to stem his impact but he just kept popping up with goals or assists. He attained an air of inevitability which is perhaps the most effective thing a player can wield against opponents, it sows the seed of resignation. Two examples of this in action are his solo run against Spurs at Anfield, which to this day is still one of the most impressive things I’ve seen him do, and his third goal against Watford at Anfield, which made me accept he was going to be extremely hard to stop for any opposition.
Against Spurs, with Liverpool drawing 1-1, he receives the ball in the opposition box, flicks it up against the hand of a defender, stops to appeal to the ref which acts as an almost decoy because the defenders start to turn to appeal the decision. In this second Salah is already chasing the ball to the end line where he chops inside a helpless sliding defender, then dummies past another. Hugo Lloris is bearing down on him and Salah just manages to poke a shot upwards into the net. It’s such a tight bit of navigation through a maze with moving walls and he performed it exactly when his team needed it. It shows the skill he has but also the mentality behind it.
The dribbling he exhibits in the lead up to this goal and the next goal in my list show case his most essential talent. Thierry Henry was an amazing dribbler and speaks about the central element in getting past opponents. You watch their feet, when their heels hit the ground they’re flat footed, that’s when you push the ball past them. It’s a core principle of dribbling and Salah consistently uses this but also showcases another. He moves quickly, he turns in many directions. In the lead up to a shot his body can seem to cycle through many poses, he shapes this way and that sounding out the opposition reactions for the moment to strike. All these posture changes are based on one thing; many small steps.
When a player is sprinting they stride, powered by mighty long smooth movements. What they gain in momentum they sacrifice in mobility. The best dribblers do not sprint, they take many small steps. Each time the feet touch the ground gives them a chance to minutely change direction and make the defenders reconfigure. Messi does it, Hazard did it, Salah does it.
Watford
Against Watford he performs a solo run but it’s not him carefully navigating his way through a defence like his Spurs goal. This time he’s leading a chasing pack a merry dance so he can pry open enough space to get a finish away.
Sadio Mané entered the box and offloaded the ball to him as he zoomed past. When he takes possession Salah has five defenders clumped in front of him. He shapes to go right, forcing the clump to migrate this way, then he cuts back onto his left, the clump migrates back expecting the shot to come straight away on his favoured foot. He delays it a split second, dragging out the reactions of each and every defender. With each individual reaction they’ve made their choice, they’re now all knee-deep in their momentum; outstretched legs, one last slide, a ravenous sprint, no other movements all possible. The second chop inside has set Salah off balance and as he’s falling forward he manages to delay his kick for as long as possible. As he tumbles downwards he scuffs the ball with a grubby swing of his leg, there’s nothing cinematic about it. The ball hops and trickles into the net as he’s fooled those five defenders and now the goalie, who are all robbed of crucial reaction time.
This was the goal that made me think ‘oh this guy really could be unstoppable’. What he did was so unshowy and ruthless, the entire point was shaking that defence to it’s core so he could find the angle. Every decision he made wrong footed the opposition and the fact he finished it with a scrappy attempt showed the breadth of approaches he had in his toolbox.
The Egyptian King
From his almost under the radar arrival to breaking the Premier League scoring record 11 months later, Salah experienced a condensed journey from professional footballer to global superstar. That progression is usually spread out across a longer period but this was squashed into the confines of a single Premier League season. The ‘Egyptian King’ chant, which is based on lyrics from the song ‘Sit Down’ by Manchester band James, and nickname started around January 2018 - fans were obviously confident enough that Salah was indeed a special player.
The last player with a King moniker was Kenny Dalglish, a unique figure woven into the fabric of the club both in a football sense and a wider cultural one. For Salah to be the only other player with a royal nickname shows the level of his impact. He finished the season with 60 goal involvements in 52 games, breaking the previous league scoring record.
End of season stats 17/18
PL 36 games - 32 goals, 11 assists
FA Cup - 1 games, 1 goal
UCL - 13 games, 10 goals, 5 assists
UCL Qual - 2 games, 1 goal
Total: 52 games, 44 goals, 16 assists (1 penalty)
Global
Beyond his undoubtedly impressive achievements on the pitch, his impact off of it was more interesting. CNN dispatched Becky Anderson, the anchor of their International news, to Merseyside to interview Salah about his mesmerising first season. It seemed like he was at the centre of the entire world. Then in addition to his ‘Egyptian King’ chant the Kop started another one referencing his scoring feats and the line ‘If he scores another few, then I’ll be Muslim too’. While the phrasing is clunky, the core message is one of tolerance and embrace at a community level. A study released by Stanford University around this time stated that Salah had contributed to a more positive perception of Muslims and hate crimes in the Liverpool area had dropped by 16%.
I write about football, concentrating on particular players or moments or skills but I usually arrive back at the power the sport holds. It’s embedded so deeply in so many communities and as a result holds such social potency. This first season, the coronation of The Egyptian King, stands as a heartening example of when everything aligns and things just… get better.
Further reading…
Including all Man Utd players, Mo is the eight-highest PL goal scorer at Old Trafford in the 2020s. Says all it needs to, about one of the greatest modern day player :)
Absolute Class!
Both the article and the player.