Mohamed Salah
Right Winger · Liverpool · Egypt
About Mohamed Salah
Mohamed Salah is Africa's greatest-ever footballer and one of the Premier League's all-time great players — a left-footed Egyptian winger who spent nine trophy-laden years rewriting Liverpool's record books before leaving the club by mutual agreement in 2026. His combination of explosive pace, sublime technique and extraordinary goal-scoring made him one of football's most complete wide players.
Mohamed Salah's story
From Nagrig to the Premier League
Salah grew up in Nagrig, a farming village in Egypt's Nile Delta, and left home as a teenager to chase football in Cairo. A difficult spell at Chelsea under José Mourinho went nowhere, but a loan at Fiorentina and two prolific seasons at Roma transformed him, and Liverpool paid £43m for him in 2017 — one of the great bargains in Premier League history.
Anfield's Third-Highest Scorer
Salah scored 257 goals in 442 appearances across nine years at Liverpool, third only to Ian Rush and Roger Hunt in the club's history. He won the Premier League Golden Boot four times, level with Thierry Henry's record, and became the first player to win the PFA Players' Player of the Year award three times. Eight major trophies followed, including the 2019 Champions League.
Egypt's Captain, Still Chasing a First Trophy
Salah captains Egypt and has reached two Africa Cup of Nations finals with them — losing 1-2 to Cameroon in 2017, then on penalties to Senegal in the 2021 final (played February 2022). Egypt went out at the semi-final stage of the 2025 tournament, also to Senegal, and finished fourth after a penalty-shootout defeat to Nigeria in the third-place playoff. With 68 international goals, he ranks among Egypt's all-time leading scorers, and led the side to the last 16 of the 2026 World Cup before losing 3-2 to Argentina.
A Free Agent Summer
Salah's exit was less clean than the headlines suggested. During a difficult 2025-26 season, he said publicly that Liverpool's coaching staff were "throwing him under the bus" over a lack of playing time, and admitted his working relationship with manager Arne Slot had broken down — comments that drew criticism from Liverpool great Jamie Carragher for airing grievances in public. Liverpool announced in March 2026 that his contract would not be renewed beyond the end of the season, and the two sides parted on those terms after nine trophy-laden years. It was the first time since his teenage career that Salah entered a transfer window without a club already lined up, setting off months of speculation before a next move was resolved.
A Private Family Man
Salah rarely gives personal interviews and has kept his home life largely out of the press, though his post-goal prostration became one of the Premier League's most recognisable celebrations. A Stanford University study published in the American Political Science Review found that hate crimes in Merseyside fell by almost 19% relative to a control group after his 2017 Liverpool signing, and that Liverpool fans halved their rate of posting Islamophobic tweets — a shift researchers linked directly to his popularity and openness about his Muslim faith.
Chess, PlayStation and the Sea
Away from matchdays, Salah has described himself as "addicted" to chess, playing strangers online most days, and is a keen FIFA player who has joked that his video-game avatar scores more than he does. He reads widely, gravitating toward books on personal development, and prefers holidays spent by the sea over anywhere else.
Did you know?
- 🏆 Won the FIFA Puskás Award in 2018 for a solo goal against Everton, and was named Premier League Player of the Month a record-equalling seven times during his Liverpool career.
- ❤️ Has funded a girls' school, a hospital and an Al-Azhar institute in his home village of Nagrig, and serves as a UNICEF ambassador and the UN's first ambassador for its Instant Network Schools programme.
- 👨👩👧👧 Married Magi Sadeq, his childhood sweetheart from Nagrig, in 2013; the couple have two daughters, Makka (born 2014) and Kayan (born 2020).
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