As many make their case for Mo Salah winning the Ballon d’Or, the Egyptian King may have more important individual accolades in his mind…
SPARE a thought.
Spare it for those who told you Liverpool had blown it this time last week.
For those who usher statements like “over my dead body”.
For that fanbase which holds up banners of the Ballon d’Or trophy in the home end.
Spare a thought for Mohamed Salah. He doesn’t need your thoughts or sympathy. Give him a home gym and the requisite amount of fair fouls he should be awarded and he’ll see to the rest.
The rest to him is the Premier League. All season Salah has banged the drum of wanting to win another league. Not for himself. For us and for those around him.
He’s in a stage of life which is both reflective and appreciative. He loves nothing more than taking in his surroundings as it heaps love and appreciation on his brilliance.
Salah past might have yearned more for individual accolades. He might have got hung up on the fact he’s ludicrously never been awarded that trophy.
Some tried to create phantom threads of him previously not passing to Sadio Mane as a link to his desperation to be crowned.
There are at least three separate occasions during his Liverpool career where Salah has been the best player in world football.
The first was his first season, the second occasion is the first half of 2021-22 and this season.
This season he is everything. He adores assisting as much as scoring. He seems to love this team and making it better.
Players marking him love running backwards like they’re being charged at by a bull. Doing their best Lisandro Martinez impression.
He loves recognition like all great forwards should. He would probably still like to win the biggest individual honour, but then Salah has long relinquished expending energy on things he can’t control.
This, in essence, is the beauty of the man. He remains eternally at peace with his own ability. Even his own contract situation. Que sera. Look outside and enjoy it.
He is enjoying it. Mainly because Liverpool are winning. Where they should be. When they haven’t been he’s the first to front up and tell us it’s unacceptable. No bullshit, no Manchester United gumpf. Just a promise to work harder.
To us, he is everything we’ve wanted since Ian Rush or Kenny Dalglish. Present, consistent and a goalscoring phenomenon. A representative of Liverpool in every sense.
If Salah wants the Ballon d’Or, we should want that for him.
When Michael Owen won it in 2001 it was a surprise to many, but also somewhat of a threat that Liverpool’s most coveted goalscorer could be lured away.
Owen never had the right affinity with Liverpool supporters and that’s a shame. Him winning the Ballon d’Or felt like another step in him leaving Liverpool behind.
Salah’s situation is different. He’s the best attacker in the best team in the best league in football. Yet there’s no sense of injustice, or a demand from the Liverpool community to see him crowned. Mostly because this is something brought up time and again to drive debate on television panels, radio shows and YouTube videos.
You can currently find a swathe of opinions on this very matter, from Daniel Sturridge to Sam Allardyce. All throwing their ten bob’s worth in because they’ve been asked, not because they think it is a fundamental matter of football importance.
People don’t believe that a player must win such a ceremonious and deeply political award to be crowned the title of best player in the world.
We remain invested in football because our opinion helps frame our narrative. We can support the same team, but believe vastly different things.
The trophy is voted for by journalists based fundamentally on their opinion, objective or otherwise.
Whether you believe Salah is the best player or not is not corroborated by a trophy which failed to fall into the hands of Virgil van Dijk in 2019, Kevin De Bruyne in 2022 and had Jorginho in the top three in 2021.
You get to believe your own truth. Mine is that Salah has been the best player in world football over three separate occasions at Liverpool and we have had the pleasure of watching him.
I want everything for him, but I increasingly get the feeling that he wants to be revered in this small corner of the world more than any other.
That, if time allowed, he would see Ian Rush’s record of 346 Liverpool goals as somewhat attainable. If he stays, he will most definitely surpass Roger Hunt.
More than anything, he wants another league. He wants to sit on Anfield’s turf and gaze at the joy he’s created and snapshot the memory for all time. He wants to make these people happy and that is such a privilege to bestow on us.
His immortalisation at Liverpool is guaranteed no matter what.
We desperately want to see him lift the Premier League, but he wants it for us so much more.
Buy Dan Morgan’s book ‘Jürgen Said To Me’ on Klopp, Liverpool and the remaking of a city…
