Mohamed Salah’s career at Liverpool looks like it will end under a cloud amid a high-profile spat with the manager. Something Jurgen Klopp once said seems pertinent.
Liverpool will feel as though it was never meant to end like this, and Mohamed Salah would surely privately agree. The Egyptian’s glittering career with the Reds will draw to a close at the weekend, but manager Arne Slot will not necessarily be at the front of the queue to give a gushing tribute.
The club has confirmed that there will be a mosaic for Salah, as well as for outgoing vice-captain Andy Robertson. But the mood will not be entirely celebratory, thanks to a reignited dispute between Slot and his team’s long-standing star player.
Having been the talisman of the Jurgen Klopp era, Salah wrote another glorious chapter when he led Slot to a debut title, but things have soured with alarming speed. After one last jab, it’s even been claimed in some quarters that the manager needs to deny the 33-year-old a farewell appearance, or else risk having his authority undermined.
READ MORE: Liverpool gets Man City 115 charges update as lawyer gives new verdictREAD MORE: Liverpool told ideal manager to bring back ‘heavy metal’ style is available
The latest spat is ostensibly about standards and styles of play. But the bulk of the animosity appears to stretch back to last November, when Slot dropped Salah from the team following a torrid run of results.
The speed with which Salah went nuclear (he insisted he had “no relationship” with Slot a week after he was first dropped) was widely criticized. However, there were many who were sympathetic to his claim of being thrown under the bus.
But whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, perhaps Slot should have seen the issue coming. Klopp was a master man-manager, but his account of handling Salah is ringing truer than ever at the moment.
“I wouldn’t say he is easy to manage, but he is also not difficult to manage,” Klopp told BBC Sport for a documentary late last year. “You [only] have problems with Mo Salah if he is not playing or you take him off.”
Mohamed Salah and Jurgen Klopp had a couple of flashpoints relating to game time.(Image: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Of course, that’s quite a big caveat for any manager to accept. Slot could not allow himself to be held to ransom by Salah’s desire to play, especially as he knew he was dealing with an older, perhaps slightly less elite version of the player whom Klopp had managed.
So maybe Slot and Salah were placed on something of a collision course from the start (or certainly once the new contract was agreed). Even so, the handling of it has to go down as a red mark next to the manager, ahead of the club taking stock in the summer.
Klopp and Salah had their moments, but it would always get resolved. Meanwhile, the conflict with Slot has been fizzing on and off throughout a good chunk of the season.
And to make matters worse, it has been allowed to develop into something of a dressing room schism. Jamie Carragher has slammed Curtis Jones for throwing his lot in with Salah, but the fact is that half of the team showed their support for his latest statement with a social media “like”.
Arne Slot faces an uneasy Liverpool dressing room.(Image: Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images)
The players undoubtedly must take a fair portion of the blame, and many should look closely at themselves before implicitly taking sides in a civil war. Indeed, one of Salah’s latest incendiary statements put his teammates in the spotlight, questioning the buy-in to the elite culture from the Klopp days.
But there’s no escaping the reality: the uneasy truce between Salah and Slot has been blown apart in his final week at the club, and the shockwaves could persist long after the Egyptian has gone. His manager’s position suddenly looks less tenable than it did previously.
Salah’s departure will solve the selection dilemma, one that even Klopp occasionally had to grapple with. But he is now leaving what seems to be a divided dressing room in his wake, and it’s a long way back for Slot to somehow regain buy-in and reassert his authority.
He could start by dropping Salah in the last game of the season, but it’s hard to see how he could come back from that among the Anfield faithful, who will be desperate to give a club legend a fitting send-off. It’s a Catch-22, and Klopp was probably the first to see it coming.
