Everyone Loses In The Liverpool-Mo Salah Clash

Of all of the ways Liverpool's no-good season could have gotten worse, I don't know if anyone expected this. On Saturday, after the Pool Boys blew both a 2-0 and a 3-2 lead to freakin' Leeds United, Mohamed Salah, who had been benched for three straight matches, fanned the flames of this tire fire in a postgame interview. He said that his relationship with Liverpool manager Arne Slot had evaporated, that the club broke some unnamed promises to him from the summer, and that Liverpool "has thrown me under the bus." For the often elusive Salah, this was as clear a declaration that something is rotten in Anfield as he was ever going to give.

The fallout has been predictably uproarious. When a star player feuds this openly with the club where he made his legend, it is never pretty. Reports are flying left and right, as everyone pounces on every bit of information that leaks out of the club. The players are all behind Salah! The club supports Slot! Dominik Szoboszlai is tweeting angrily at random Hungarian journalists! On Monday, Slot gave a press conference tried to quell the flames to predictable futility, and now it seems like a divorce for Salah and Liverpool is more likely than not. Salah is not playing in the Champions League this week, and he might never don a Liverpool jersey again. He'll be off to the Africa Cup of Nations with Egypt soon, and he might never return to the club. For its part, Liverpool has to either figure out how to get Salah back in the mix or figure out how to get rid of him and move on from the most successful era it has had this millennium. Slot might still be fired, too.

In other words, everyone here is in hell and there's no ice water on the way. Let's break down each factor of this calamity, starting with the man himself.

Mohamed Salah

There is no winning for Mo Salah here. Perhaps that's why he gave the interview in the first place. Salah has been Liverpool's guiding light for so long that no one—not the club, not the manager, and certainly not Salah himself—could have been ready for what might happen should he be downgraded to mere squad player. Salah is still capable of things no one on Liverpool can provide, but his performances have not kept up with his résumé this season. Hell, dating back to January, Salah has not looked like the same player that blitzed Liverpool into a huge Premier League lead during the first half of last season, from which it cruised to a joyfully unexpected title. With that context, the benching looks reasonable, but maybe reason isn't the point. The whole team is struggling, and it's not hard to imagine why Salah would feel scapegoated, since it's mostly Liverpool's defense that has fallen apart.

All that being said, you just can't do this shit, man. I don't care much for professionalism as a trait in pro athletes. The world demands so much grace from them, while asking very little of it from management and executives, so I don't blame the ones who veer off the high road. But there was no benefit to Salah immolating his Liverpool career in one postgame interview. If his goal was to secure a spot on the lineup, how would this have helped? If, on the other hand, his goal was to secure a move away from Liverpool, putting his head down for a few more weeks was likely a smarter course of action. Even with his struggles in production this season, Salah is still Salah, and he would have commanded enough of a fee, particularly from the long-rumored Saudi Arabian league, that Liverpool would gladly send him and his massive contract on the way.

Now, though, Salah is a malcontent, and an exit now would be an acrimonious one, barring a shocking change of heart from both sides to reconcile this disaster. I could see the argument that Salah was simply emotional in the moment and reacted accordingly, but that has never been his MO. He doesn't really speak to the media, and especially not right after matches, so when he does, it's calculated. (The last time he did speak in the so-called mixer, he was agitating for his new contract last season.) Salah had to have come into the interview planning to drop a bomb into Liverpool's already collapsing season, and now the whole thing has, predictably, blown up.

Arne Slot

This whole deal has put Liverpool manager Arne Slot in a horrible position, partly of his own making. After winning the Premier League in his first season, with mostly the same roster as the one from Jürgen Klopp's disappointing last campaign, Slot looked bulletproof. The club added plenty of expensive talent this summer, with the implied understanding that Slot would incorporate them all flawlessly. He has not, and Liverpool's season, which started so well on points but with red flags flapping in the wind with each dramatic win, has gone down the drain.

Is the problem tactical? Is it the players' performances? Or is this a team-wide mental block? Slot hasn't been able to figure that out yet, and now he has his best and highest-paid player openly feuding with him and the club. It's not an easy job for the Dutchman, made harder by the lingering tragedy of Diogo Jota's passing, something that no manager could have been prepared for. (It is worth noting that, by all reports, Salah was one of Jota's closest friends on the squad.) After a relatively straightforward first season, culminating in the title Liverpool craves above all, Slot's job difficulty increased tenfold almost immediately, and he has not been up to the challenge.

With that in mind, Slot has handled the fallout of Salah's weekend interview about as well as a manager could, so there's that. At the press conference on Monday, Slot was calm and straightforward, refusing to fight fire with fire but still noting that the club had to react to Salah's words. That reaction was strong: Salah has been left out of the squad that traveled to Italy for Tuesday's Champions League clash with Inter, his fourth straight match without starting for Liverpool. Slot also reportedly has the backing of the club brass, which is the correct thing for everyone involved; the oft-repeated refrain that "no player is bigger than the club" is true, and no player, not even Mo Salah, should have the power to tantrum his manager out of a job.

This isn't to say that Slot is home free now, though. He will have to decide what to do with Salah as soon as Saturday, when the Reds host Brighton in the Premier League. Can Slot repair this relationship enough to save both Salah's tenure at Liverpool and his own job? He was already on the hot seat, thanks to Liverpool's catastrophic form, but now, he has to back up the club's trust in him, and he has to do it fast. With the looming potential firing by Real Madrid of Xabi Alonso—Alonso was the favorite to take over Liverpool after Klopp called it quits, but decided to stay at Bayer Leverkusen for a year before taking over at Real—there won't be a shortage of calls for a managerial swap if Liverpool continues to drop points left and right. Salah might have saved Slot's job for now by shifting the spotlight, but results will win out at the end of the day, and Slot is on a razor's edge.

Liverpool

I've put no effort in hiding that I am a Liverpool fan, so let me rant for a second about how much this stinks to watch. The Liverpool-Salah partnership has been one of the best in the history of the Premier League, and the Egyptian king has helped end the club's title drought twice-over, all while becoming one of the best five or so players on the planet. Eras always come to a close, and I have no illusions to the contrary. Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino were almost as important as Salah to this era of prosperity, and they were both sold off and now ply their trade in the Middle East. The end comes for everyone.

That doesn't make this situation any easier to take. Salah could have left at the end of last season, no new contract in tow, and it would have been better than watching everyone involved lose their heads. Instead, Liverpool gave him the contract he wanted, and now must reap the pain of what happens to a star winger when he turns 33 and seemingly loses his pace and quickness overnight. I was thrilled that the club re-signed Salah, to be clear; he was too important and beloved to lose out on a contract negotiation. (He and I share a birthday, which is not important, except to note that I know this because I, like many Liverpool fans, could not get enough of Salah.) But the clock started ticking on his status as a top-tier player the second he signed on the dotted line. Salah's playing style was always going to be vulnerable to the ravages of aging, though no one could have seen the decline happening this quickly.

Now, Liverpool is in an impossible position. On one hand, Salah is a club legend, the best attacker of the club's Premier League history (which, before I get yelled at, I have to note started in 1992), and a player who has won everything on offer. On the other, how can the club bow to his outburst? The club had to back Slot here, because one of the unspoken rules of soccer is that no player should have all that power. Did the club want to back a manager who has helmed such a terrible start to the season? Probably not! There have been rumblings that Slot's seat wasn't just hot, it was nuclear, but any firing now would, fair or not, be perceived as Salah winning his power play. Instead of an amicable solution, now Liverpool has to deal with a disgruntled star, a lame-duck manager, and a lot of questions about how it got this bad this quickly. Congratulations, Liverpool, you are now more dysfunctional than Manchester United.

Jamie Carragher

During Salah's postgame interview, he specifically called out fellow Liverpool legend and prolific pundit Jamie Carragher. When he's not getting trolled by Micah Richards and Thierry Henry on the CBS Champions League panel, Carragher is on Sky Sports' Monday Night Football show, and he has been one of Salah's harshest critics this season. Just a couple of weeks ago, Carragher blasted Salah for his lack of defending, while saying that "his legs are gone." Carragher's reaction to Salah's comments was appointment viewing on Monday, and Sky gave him eight minutes to monologue about it.

The result was prime Carragher, and I don't mean that entirely as a compliment. Donned in an all-business black long-sleeve tee, Carragher contradicted himself repeatedly, stating that he never critiques Salah's on-field performance, just his off-field antics. As host Dave Jones pointed out, referencing the "legs are gone" comment, that is not true, but Carragher, in his heavy Scouse accent, plowed through and did hit on some correct analysis. Salah does only really talk to the press when he's complaining about some perceived personal slight, and going public with his dissatisfaction was a selfish move that made the lives of everyone at the club harder. But Carragher missed both in his contradictions and just plain incorrect analysis; Salah has covered more ground per game this season than he did last season, and he's created more big chances than anyone on Liverpool. Salah has definitely been poor in his end-product this year, but Carragher is so focused on the supposed disrespect to "his" club (what makes it his and not, say, Salah's?) that he plowed through facts in favor of rhetoric. It did make for great TV, though.

Egypt

If there is any winner in this mess, it might be the Egyptian national team. Heading into the 2026 Africa Cup of Nations, the team will have a rested and motivated Salah, and the former might be even more important than the latter. Coming as it does in the middle of the European season, AFCON has always been a grind, and Egypt having its best player fully fit and ready to dominate should bode well. Looking further down the road, if the Liverpool-Salah relationship is permanently frayed and he does transfer to Saudi Arabia, Egypt will have a Salah that is not coming off of a grueling second half of the Premier League (and the Champions League, for that matter) heading into the 2026 World Cup. Egypt's group next summer isn't the easiest—Belgium, Iran, and New Zealand await—but Salah at his full physical powers, whatever that looks like at 33, should help the Pharaohs progress into the round of 32 and maybe beyond. It's not the ideal situation for anyone, but Egypt could stand to reap the benefits of this messy divorce-in-the-making.

So, yeah, Liverpool is in a bit of a pickle, and I hate pickles. There's certainly a world where the time away from Liverpool while at AFCON shakes the cobwebs off of Salah, and that absence makes the heart grow fonder, or whatever. He could return in January, make peace with Slot and the club, and return to his old ways. But there's also a world—and this is the world that I think we're living in—where Salah never plays for Liverpool again, Slot gets fired before the new year, and everyone is miserable. At the very least, it feels like there's more explosions to come in this whole thing. Salah's interview, and the reaction in the days that followed, has made that almost a guarantee. For a team that was so dominant and downright joyful last season, everything has shattered since the summer, and there doesn't appear to be a single person involved who can glue it all back together.