MOHAMED
SALAH

The announcement followed a difficult Liverpool campaign under Arne Slot, the second of the post-Klopp era. By the international break Salah had told media that his relationship with the manager was 'non-existent', and described being 'thrown under the bus' after Liverpool's 3-3 draw at Leeds in December. The club's response in March was carefully neutral; the parties agreed the existing contract would not be extended and Salah would leave on a free at the end of the season.

Salah's representative said publicly that no agreement on a next club had been reached. Reporting from Sky Sports, ESPN and beIN Sports through April 2026 has consistently named Saudi Pro League clubs Al-Ittihad and Al-Hilal as the favoured destinations, with rumoured wages in the €40-50m net per season range. Inter Miami in MLS has also been linked. The first concrete announcement is expected within weeks of the 2025-26 Premier League season finishing.

Statistically Salah leaves Anfield with 191 goals in 313 appearances, second in modern Liverpool history only to Ian Rush. He is the club's all-time leading scorer in the Premier League era, the leading African scorer in Premier League history, and the only player in Premier League history to win Player of the Season, Golden Boot and Playmaker of the Season in the same campaign (2024-25).

AFCON 2017 in Gabon was the first chance. Salah scored in the group stage and the semi-final; Egypt reached the final but lost 2-1 to Cameroon, with Vincent Aboubakar's late winner. AFCON 2019 (hosted by Egypt) was a worse story — eliminated by South Africa in the round of 16, in Cairo, in front of a home crowd that turned within minutes of the final whistle.

AFCON 2021 in Cameroon (held in early 2022 due to COVID-19) was the closest call. Salah scored, assisted, dragged Egypt through penalty shootouts in the round of 16, quarter-final and semi-final, and faced his Liverpool teammate Sadio Mane in the final. Senegal won the shootout 4-2; Salah did not take a penalty. The post-match images of him consoling his teammates while Mane lifted the trophy became a defining moment of his international career.

AFCON 2025 in Morocco ended in a semi-final defeat to Senegal again — Mane's only goal of the tournament from Senegalese open play sealed the win. Egypt finished fourth after losing the third-place playoff to Nigeria. Salah is unlikely to play another AFCON; the 2027 edition is in his home country and the federation is publicly hoping he commits to a final tournament before retirement.

Nagrig is a village of about 15,000 in the Nile Delta. The local football scene is informal; Salah's first organised football was at El Mokawloon's youth academy in Cairo, a four-hour bus journey each way that he has confirmed in multiple long-form interviews. By 18 he was a senior squad player; by 20 he was Basel's main winger; by 22 he was a Chelsea player. The Chelsea spell did not work — 13 league appearances under Jose Mourinho — and the easy verdict was 'too small for the Premier League'. The verdict was wrong by exactly the timing of the move, not by the talent.

The Italian half of the career rebuilt him. Six months on loan at Fiorentina, then 18 months at Roma, gave him the technical and tactical platform that Chelsea had not. Roma sold him to Liverpool for £36.9m in summer 2017, the highest fee of Roma's modern era at the time. Liverpool's analytics team had identified him as the priority target; Klopp's coaching turned the Roma version into the Anfield version.

The Liverpool career then redefined what an African player can do in the Premier League. 32 league goals in his first season — a 38-game season record at the time. Champions League winner in year two. Premier League winner in year three. Four Golden Boots, three PFA Player of the Year awards, two CAF African Footballer of the Year awards. The exit in summer 2026 closes a chapter that nobody — including Salah's own scouts at Basel in 2012 — would have predicted at the start.

He has personally funded a hospital, a school and a water-treatment plant in Nagrig, and is reported to have paid for the resurfacing of the village's main road. Charity work has been routed through his own foundation rather than through major commercial agencies. He does not give political endorsements and has actively used Time and FIFA platforms to push back against negative stereotypes of Arab and Muslim men in Western media.

Marriage and family are kept off social media. He is married to Magi Salah and has two daughters, Makka and Kayan; both are regulars at Anfield family days. He is a practising Muslim and observes Ramadan during the Premier League season — including fasting on matchdays when the schedule allows — and prays after every goal. Liverpool's nutrition team has publicly described the season-long management of his Ramadan calendar as a model that other Premier League clubs have copied.

In Egypt his cultural footprint is unusually direct. A 2018 awareness campaign featuring his image is widely credited with encouraging tens of thousands of new female sports-club applicants in a single week. Adverts featuring Salah crossed regional and class lines that few Egyptian celebrities can. His face is visible on murals in Cairo, Alexandria and Nagrig, and Egyptian national-team kits with his name on the back are a perennial best-seller across Africa and the Gulf.