Mohamed Salah contract: Is Liverpool forward likely to stay at Anfield beyond the summer?
Mohamed Salah missed a penalty against Real Madrid and the Liverpool supporters responded by serenading him. They fear he will leave as a free agent, but his own contractual history with the club offers hope to the contrary…
Thursday 28 November 2024 13:22, UK
In June 2022, while holidaying on the turquoise-tinged waters of El Gouna along Egypt’s Red Sea, Mohamed Salah was forced to first contemplate leaving Liverpool.
His contract was up the following summer and two years' worth of negotiations between his advisor, or more appropriately his "partner" Ramy Abbas, and the club's power brokers failed to result in a consensus.
Liverpool sent in three proposals, all of which were a distance away from the terms drafted on Salah's behalf. "I am starting to fear that we may not be able to come to an agreement on a new contract, Mohamed - their latest offer is still very far from what we want," Abbas told him during a lengthy phone call.
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It wasn't what Salah, who was determined to remain at Anfield, was minded to hear. His daughters were born in the city, loved school, their friends and their life. Uprooting them was not on Salah's agenda.
But there were a host of issues with negotiations; the player felt a new contract should reflect his contributions to the club and his status as their decisive edge, while Liverpool were being sustainable in trying to forecast future service and any potential dips due to his age.
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The split in remuneration between fixed and variable payments, the latter related to individual and team performance, as well as the finer print of how bonuses would be applied, was a big sticking point.
The negotiation around Salah's image rights was also complex and Abbas described trying to get the renewal over the line - which happened within a month of the pair thinking an agreement would not be found - as "the hardest thing I've ever done."
Until now. While there are similarities between the process of the forward's last contract extension and the current state of play, the stakes and the risks for both parties have ballooned.
Time is on the side of neither. Salah is 34 days away from being permitted to sign a pre-deal with an overseas club and seven months off from being able to wave farewell to Anfield as a free agent.
Liverpool, still heavily reliant on his gifts, have yet to make an offer they feel he would consider - or even just slightly amend. That is the marker that there is plenty of ground separating Salah's expectations and their allowance, which of course, does not exist in isolation.
Liverpool have the gigantic problem of Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold being out of contract this summer too, and while the latter has the ace of Real Madrid's interest, sources maintain negotiations around Salah are the most complex given his worth - not just on the pitch, but off it too.
He is, quite admirably, fully aware of it. The "conservative estimation" from Abbas ahead of the July 2022 extension was for the "total amount received by Mohamed and the image rights companies over the next few years from both his playing contract and his image rights contracts to be somewhere between €54m [£46.8m] and €62m [£53.7m] per year."
It is no wonder then that Harvard Business School chose to feature the length and breadth of that renegotiation in its business of entertainment, media and sport programme for MBA students.
Back then, Jurgen Klopp offered that "extending a contract with a player like Mo is not something where you meet for a cup of tea in the afternoon and find an agreement."
Amid what is an exhaustive process, there is a sea of hope for those desperate to see Salah continue being Liverpool's gold dust: the bottom line is he wants exactly that, and so do the club.
That is the fundamental point underpinning negotiations, now for the compromise.
Salah's side of the story...
The assessment of Salah's decision to stop in the mixed zone - only the third time he has done so at Liverpool - was interesting. Jamie Carragher labelled it "selfish" and said it would be a distraction ahead of the Champions League tussle with Real Madrid.
The counter-argument was: why should a player with 320 direct goal involvements in 367 games for the club have to publicly pressure them to actually make an offer?
Perhaps the most overlooked element of Sunday's comments from Salah is that he felt the need to speak because he wants to stay. He is not just considering his future, but that of his family and there is minimal time to plot the next step.
'Why doesn't he just accept whatever Liverpool's terms are then?'
Well, why should he? It feels daft to reel off the numbers, his status of being the first player to reach double figures in Europe's top leagues for both goals and assists this season, to spell out what he has contributed since his signing in July 2017.
Salah is undoubtedly still Liverpool's reference point and his influence stretches beyond the pitch, where the club have profited from new markets and sponsorships on the back of the Egyptian. He is valuable in a way and scale no other player has managed at Anfield.
And he works hard for it; his mental and physical conditioning as well as his acumen when making business decisions is elite.
It is why some of the examples used to showcase how players on the other side of 30 drop off after a mega contract - like Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang - have felt insulting to Salah and the investment he has made in himself to continue making excellence a habit.
"We know clubs are hesitant to give big contracts to older players," Abbas told Harvard Business Study, "but Mohamed can play well into his early 40s if he wants to."
Salah's ideal is to continue firing Liverpool to silverware, will they make him an offer that makes that a reality
Liverpool's side of the story...
Top of the Premier League, top of the Champions League, and feeling top of the world through what was being billed as an uncertain, unsexy post-Klopp era, Liverpool have consistently proven they get the big decisions right.
Their sustainable, noise-cancelling approach has been successful and there is confidence in the fortified operational structure of the club, overseen by Michael Edwards.
Liverpool's job is not to give a player whatever he wants but to use a wide lens and assess all repercussions of a single decision. They are in no doubt about what Salah is capable of, what he is worth, and how much he means to the club beyond performances and sentiment.
Players like him have earned a tweaking of the parameters, but not at the expense of future squad planning, keeping the age profile of the team healthy, and natural evolution.
Even if they keep Salah and Van Dijk, which is the win all parties are after, Liverpool will have to replace them in the not-so-distant future.
They cannot ignore that reality in their calculations. There will be the weighing up of what to throw at Alexander-Arnold - chiefly the kitchen sink - for him to delay the desire to join Real, sign an extension, and fetch a head-spinning sum if he does leave for Madrid as he'll represent pure profit on the books.
Allowing the 26-year-old academy graduate to exit for free this summer is a worse trading look than shaking hands with Salah and Van Dijk, giving them a rousing send-off, and wishing them well.
There are multiple sizeable equations at play.
Rightly or wrongly, if Liverpool survey the European landscape, they might take heart that there is no obvious fit for Salah. He wants to be competing for top honours and remain centre stage so which of the best clubs have an opening for him and can assume the cost of a meaty signing-on fee and the wages he is worth?
Salah is very mindful of how his strengths would fit stylistically as well. "I can't tell Mohamed that, say, he will fit better in Ancelotti's system, or is going to do much better with Guardiola," Abbas explained. "Many other agents do that, but I do not. Mohamed knows his football."
The adulation Salah receives from the Kop - as was the case after his missed penalty - will not be replicated anywhere else. His endorsements have been partly a result of the club he plays for, the foundations they've created for him to thrive, and the emotional connection that can be commercially mined.
Liverpool will need to make some concessions, but so too must Salah.
How did we get here?
The frustration for a large swathe of Liverpool supporters is wrapping their heads around how the club - with a well-earned reputation of being run smartly - have backed themselves into such a tight corner where three of their spine can exit at the same time.
The answer is layered; affixed to structural changes, a shifting of power, a season of Europa League football, needing an urgent midfield rebuild, Klopp's shock decision to step away, and judging the assimilation under Arne Slot.
Sporting director Richard Hughes has inherited a shambolic situation completely not of his making, and he has to crack the conundrum.
Everything stretches back to spell in 2022, starting with the departure of the man who filled that role before Hughes and headhunted him - Edwards, now CEO of football for owners Fenway Sports Group.
Julian Ward, his replacement as sporting director, announced he was also leaving after just a few months in the position. Mike Gordon, FSG president and head of the day-to-day running of Liverpool, had stepped back from his responsibilities.
Along with Edwards, he was instrumental in ensuring the club were world-class off the pitch and putting the pieces in place - including the coup of landing Klopp - to mirror that where it mattered most.
In the absence of the pair, suddenly the manager was all-powerful on account of the glory he had delivered and while no one could ever begrudge him such status, the admin of recruitment and contract renewals isn't his strong point.
There were more pressing issues like refitting a midfield that was starved of dynamism, steel and variety. Europa League football is not the platform to seduce players to commit to the club so getting back to the top table was paramount.
Liverpool steered themselves back into healthy, happy territory but then came the jolt of Klopp's goodbye.
When the German told FSG last November that he would be calling time on his intoxicating Anfield tenure in the summer, the hierarchy could have pulled a fast move to tie Salah, Virgil and Alexander-Arnold down before they knew he was leaving. That is not the way they like to do business.
"The club have known about my departure for a while," Klopp explained in January. "Tying the players down and then me saying 'I won't be here anymore', they'd be like 'no one told us that', you can't work like this, especially with the relationship we have.
"There's enough time to do everything. These players love to be here. I know that for a fact."
That remains true. There had been a desire from both sides - Liverpool and the trio - to understand what Arne Slot's football would look and feel like, and how it would translate to them. To that end, talks over new deals are understood to have commenced in October.
Liverpool remain calm over the situation. Salah can't be blamed for feeling otherwise.
