It didn’t take long after January ended and Jürgen Klopp announced he was leaving for Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah to be linked with a Saudi move again.
Liverpool is losing Jürgen Klopp in the summer, but that only makes tying down key players like Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk even more important. Both are crucial stars in the Reds’ squad, and both have around a year and a half left on their deals.
If Liverpool is to undergo a period of transition in its coaching department, with assistants Pep Lijnders, Peter Krawietz and Vitor Matos also moving on, keeping as much continuity as possible on the field becomes paramount. Losing Klopp and one of the best players in the world in one summer must be avoided.
Van Dijk has already backtracked on comments about him being uncertain of his future. He insisted that he remains ‘fully committed’ to the Liverpool cause, and there is no reason for the Reds not to offer him an extended deal.
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But with Salah, the feeling that more speculation is just around the corner has never gone away. Sure, the Saudi Pro League might be less appealing now than last summer, but when it comes to contract negotiations, if last time is anything to go by, his representative will not be conducting things quietly. In 2022, cryptic ‘updates’ on Twitter (now X) were fairly regular.
Salah was the subject of a $188m (£150m/€175m) bid from Al Ittihad in the summer that Liverpool dismissed out of hand. Talk of a second bid worth more than $250m (£200m/€234m) never came to anything.
But with 18 months left on his current deal, speculation about him being open to going to the Middle East for mega money is a nice bargaining chip. It would not be in Salah’s interests to rule out a move that would be lucrative.
“I think there’s more chance of him going now that Klopp’s gone,” journalist Ben Jacobs said live on talkSPORT this week (as transcribed by TeamTalk). “Salah’s at a crossroads, Liverpool’s at a crossroads, so if Klopp stayed, I would have predicted that he’d go to Saudi in 2025 and he’d do one more season in Europe with Liverpool.
“But Klopp going now might mean — especially if there’s silverware — Salah goes out on a high. And then the only twist from a Saudi perspective is that it won’t be Al Ittihad.”
For Liverpool and for Salah, though, nothing has changed. The Reds are still reliant on their star man and the Anfield side remains the best place for one of the best players on the planet to perform. Both parties still need each other and Liverpool will be back in the Champions League next year after a season out of Europe’s top competition.
The name of the Saudi club being linked most heavily with Salah might have changed — it is now Al Hilal deemed as the most likely destination rather than Al Ittihad — but the reality is that a move there should not be appealing. Klopp leaving will not be sufficient to change that.
“Al Ittihad got preference for Salah [in the summer] because they are the Saudi champions and they were competing in the Club World Cup, so of course you want him to be the poster boy,” Jacobs explained. “Now, they’re seventh in the Saudi Pro League and Al-Hilal are seemingly cruising to the title, so I think the offer will now come from Al Hilal.”
Al Hilal is the club that Neymar and Aleksandar Mitrović play for. Sergej Milinković-Savić and Rúben Neves are in midfield while former Benfica boss Jorge Jesus is the manager. It is seven points clear of Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al Nassr in the table as things stand.
As far as the Saudi Pro League goes, that is impressive and no other side in the division can match that. However, Salah staying at Liverpool can still only be viewed as the only sensible option for him and for the club. If the twist in the potential saga is simply that a different Saudi team is interested, then the outcome should be clear until something more substantial changes.
