Liverpool lost that game 2-1 – their only
league defeat of the season – and missed
out on the title to City by a point. Had Salah
beaten Stones to that ball, or had Stones’
clearance ricocheted off him into the net,
they’d have surely got the draw that secured
them the club’s first league championship
since 1990, as the new Invincibles. Instead,
they’d lost out on their dream by the barest
of margins, despite winning their last nine
matches of the season and amassing 97
points – then the third-highest points total in
Premier League history. How’s your luck?
Salah responded in the way he always has
- the next season, he went again, and didn’t
stop until he’d extinguished any memory of
that close call by helping Liverpool dominate
the title race from the start.
This time when they faced a Manchester
giant in January, they were 13 points clear,
having won 20 and lost none of their opening
21 league matches – their only draw coming
in a game Salah missed through injury. When
Manchester United visited Anfield, Liverpool
led 1-0 in front of a raucous crowd, before
Salah raced clear in the final minute to seal
victory, celebrating by ripping his shirt off to
display his bare chest in front of the Kop
(below). It was his first goal against United.
“That United game when I scored the
second goal, that was my favourite moment
that season,” he says. “That year we had the
confidence that, OK, the year before we’d
done everything that was possible to win it.
We lost only one game, so everybody was
confident that we could go again and we
could do it, because we’d got 97 points. We’d
done a really good job to finish that season
and try to win it, but we couldn’t, so the year
after we were more confident we could do it.
And we did.”
This time, Liverpool got 99 points. Having
also lifted the Super Cup and their first ever
Club World Cup, long-awaited Premier League
glory was confirmed when Manchester City
lost at Chelsea, with a month of the season
still remaining. The squad famously gathered
in front of a giant screen at Formby Hall to
watch the historic moment together.
“I think I was the only one who didn’t want
City to lose!” Salah laughs now. “I wanted us
to win it in a game ourselves, because there
were still a few left. I wanted us to win the
game and then celebrate. But it was a great
moment anyway – everybody was so happy.”
“I WAS NEVER LAZY AT CHELSEA”
If 2020-21 went far from ideally for Liverpool
- a major injury crisis ended their hopes of
retaining the title early on – Salah himself
scored 31 times in all competitions, his best
tally since that stellar 44-goal debut season.
This season he stepped it up again, netting
15 goals in his first 12 appearances, including
that stunning solo effort against Manchester
City, plus a hat-trick in Liverpool’s 5-0 triumph
at Manchester United. That afternoon, Salah
became the first Reds player ever to score in
10 successive games, and the first opposition
player to bag a Premier League treble at Old
Trafford. The last person to achieve that feat
in any competition was his boyhood idol
Ronaldo, for Real Madrid in the Champions
League in 2003. The Brazilian himself has
joined the long list of Salah admirers in
recent times, declaring: “I love him, he’s
an incredible player.” Those words
meant something to Salah.
“Of course... I’m a big fan of his!” he
beams, emphasising that last word, and
still wide-eyed that the 2002 World Cup
winner enjoys his own brand of stardust.
“He was one of the players who really
made me love football – he was magic,
one of the best ever. I met him once, we
didn’t talk much, but he’s unbelievable.
“For me to score a hat-trick at Old
Trafford was unbelievable, too. To be the
first player in the Premier League to score
a hat-trick there was something special
because Liverpool and Manchester Unitedare always like this...” he adds, banging his
fists together to indicate fierce rivalry.
Salah’s use of that word ‘unbelievable’ says
much about the dream he’s been living for
five years now – a dream so good that it’s
been hard to take it all in sometimes, even if
he insisted at the start of this interview that
he foresaw many of the great things that
have happened since he joined the club.
His time as a Liverpool player couldn’t have
been more of a contrast with that unhappy
spell at Chelsea earlier in his career, when
a move to the Premier League from Swiss
side Basel didn’t work out. Salah was signed
during Jose Mourinho’s time in charge, but
barely used by the Portuguese boss – he
started just six league games for the Blues,
one of them ironically being the 2-0 victory
at Anfield when Steven Gerrard’s slip went
a long way to denying Liverpool the title
under Brendan Rodgers in 2014.Above Mo goes
1.12cm from title
triumph in 201934 June 2022 FourFourTwo
Goals Games Goals per game
Ian Rush 346 660 0.52
Roger Hunt 285 492 0.58
Gordon Hodgson 241 377 0.64
Billy Liddell 228 534 0.43
Steven Gerrard 186 710 0.26
Robbie Fowler 183 369 0.50
Kenny Dalglish 172 515 0.33
Michael Owen 158 297 0.53
Mo Salah 153 240 0.64
Harry Chambers 151 339 0.45Salah has already joined Liverpool’s all-time leading scorers –
with an even better strike rate than Merseyside deity Ian RushFigures correct to April 4THE TOP 10
MO
SALAH