The Truth Behind Mohamed Salah’s Liverpool Exit—Report
It was Mohamed Salah who made the first move in talks with Liverpool over terminating his contract this summer, a report has revealed.
Salah signed a new two-year contract last summer but has already confirmed that he will walk away from the final 12 months of that lucrative deal at the end of the current campaign. Having injured his hamstring against Crystal Palace, he may well have already played the last game of his Anfield career.
According to The Times, Salah was the one to raise the issue of a contract termination with Liverpool, having decided that he did not want to continue working under manager Arne Slot.
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Salah famously took aim at Slot in December after being benched for three matches in a row, claiming he was being forced out and scapegoated for Liverpool’s poor start to the season. It was that issue that sparked Salah’s desire to walk away.
Slot has already admitted that he does not mind being known as the “bad guy” for his role in Salah’s exit, but did deny responsibility for the decision by pointing out Salah’s spells out of the team under former boss Jürgen Klopp.
Why Would Liverpool Agree to Terminate Salah’s Contract?
Salah has been Liverpool’s best player over the past decade and sits close to the top of the club’s all-time rankings. Letting him go is not a decision that would have been taken lightly.
Liverpool were clearly prepared to commit to Salah when they handed him a two-year contract last summer off the back of one of the all-time great individual seasons, but the situation has changed drastically over the past 12 months and the club’s hand has been somewhat forced.
As soon as the current campaign began, it became clear that all was not well with Liverpool. Once a streak of fortuitous victories dried up, concerns about Salah’s form quickly began to emerge.
Salah felt as though he was taking an unfair amount of criticism for Liverpool’s struggles and, in his defense, he has a point. Nobody who has watched the Reds this season would claim the rest of the squad is immune from criticism—there is an argument that Dominik Szoboszlai is the only player worthy of praise.
Unfortunately for Salah, he is judged by different standards. His new contract includes a salary of around $540,000 (£400,000) per week, which is astronomical even by modern Premier League standards. That expense requires a superhuman output, the sort of which we saw last season from Salah but have seen nothing of this time around.
If Salah is no longer the version of himself from 2024–25, Liverpool cannot justify paying him a salary bettered only by Manchester City striker Erling Haaland among all Premier League players.
Those finances will have weighed heavily on Liverpool when pressed to make this decision, but there will also have been a human element to this. After all, Salah has played a huge role in Liverpool’s return to the top of the mountain and will deservedly be remembered as one of the Premier League’s all-time greats. When he says he is unhappy, you have to listen.
When Salah made it clear his desire for this to be the end, Liverpool knew something had to change. Rather than fire Slot, prove their willingness to bow to star power and continue paying a club-record salary to a soon-to-be 34-year-old who may or may not be on a sharp decline, they made the tough decision to grant Salah’s wish of an early exit.
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