APRIL 28 — It’s been quite a week for Mohamed Salah.
First, Liverpool’s Egyptian star was named the Premier League’s player of the year by his fellow professionals, and then — far more important than any individual award — he played the central role in his team’s stunning Champions League semi-final first leg victory.
Salah was simply brilliant against Roma on Tuesday night as Liverpool claimed a 5-2 advantage which will surely be enough to take them into the final — yes, Roma have already enjoyed one three-goal second leg comeback in the competition to overcome Barcelona, but that kind of thing doesn’t happen often and I can’t see Liverpool struggling to advance on Tuesday night.
At Anfield on Tuesday night, Salah’s opening goal was sumptuous as he received possession on the right corner of the area and delicately stroked a perfectly placed curled shot into the top left corner, grazing the underneath of the crossbar on the way in.
And that was just the beginning. Salah continued to ooze class and confidence every time he had possession, adding a second goal before half-time with a cool chip and then teeing up further strikes for forward partners Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino in the second half.
Salah is obviously a hugely talented player, and it’s very clear that right now he is in the form of his life, happily locked into a virtuous circle whereby he has the confidence to try anything, and because he’s so confident it’s nearly all coming off, therefore further reinforcing his confidence.
That’s a happy place for any sportsperson to dwell, and on current form Salah without doubt deserves to be included among the best attacking players in the world.
What he has to do, though, is sustain his current form over an extended period of not only months, but years. That is what the very best are able to do — most obviously Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — and for Salah to be counted in that kind of company over the long term, he still needs to be playing the way he is now in April 2022.
That’s something he has never previously achieved. At the age of 25, Salah is not a young or inexperienced player. He has been around for a number of years already, and never come close to hitting the heights he is currently reaching.
His goalscoring record at his first European club Basel was good but not spectacular, he did no better than OK at Chelsea, and impressed without being a world beater during his two seasons with Roma — with due respect, if he’d been that good he would have ended up at a bigger club than Liverpool.
Maybe I’m being harsh, but I’m just trying to put his current form and his overall standing in the game into some kind of context.
This season, without doubt, he has been brilliant, and it could yet have a fairytale ending if he can lead Liverpool to Champions League glory (which is perfectly plausible).
But one season does not make a career, and before we can start seriously regarding him as an elite player on the level of Messi or Ronaldo, he has to come back next year and do it again.
He has to come back and deliver the same levels of production when his confidence has dipped and he’s not feeling quite so good about himself as he is right now. He has to come back and do it again when opposition coaches and defenders have studied him carefully and worked out how to nullify his strengths. He has to come back and do it again when his team have lost their way, or when he’s fallen out with his coach, or if he’s struggling with an injury.
If he can do that for four or five years in a row, then we can start talking about him as one of the best in the world. But before he can reach that summit, he still has a lot to prove.
Is Salah the best player of 2018 so far? Quite possibly. But is he the best player in the world? That’s a different question, and at the moment he’s nowhere near.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
