This is the great weight hanging over Liverpool: why do the contractual conditions of Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold remain unresolved?
The trio will be free agents next summer and will contact interested foreign clubs from January if no new terms are agreed before then.
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So why do 3 of Liverpool’s top players occupy this position?And what do the club’s officials plan to do about it?
Over the next 3 days, our experts will compare each player, based on conversations with resources familiar with their situation but who have asked to remain anonymous in their positions.
First of all, Salah.
When Salah signed a three-year contract with Liverpool in 2022, he was the highest-paid player in the club’s history with a base weekly salary of £350,000 ($450,000 at existing rates) plus performance-related bonuses. receives from amendments, earns almost a million pounds a week.
This “conservative” estimate is revealed in a 2023 Harvard University study in collaboration with the player and his agent, Ramy Abbas.
At the time, Salah aroused the interest of clubs in Saudi Arabia, a country that invested billions of pounds in football, mainly through its Public Investment Fund (PIF).
Although one of the clubs controlled by the PIF, Al Ittihad, managed to sign Liverpool midfielder Fabinho for £40m last summer, they fell through with a £100m offer, going up to £150m, to sign Salah for a while before making the same move. window closed.
Salah is pleased to remain on Merseyside, where he has scored 56 goals in 96 games since signing his last contract. He now knows what kind of access fee he might be imposed if he decides to give up his Liverpool contract and move. to Saudi Arabia.
Although Liverpool’s new director, Richard Hughes, has approached Abbas, there has been no announcement of a renewal.
There is widespread astonishment among enthusiasts and across the industry that Liverpool have taken so long to let Salah, as well as Van Dijk and Alexander-Arnold, speak so late despite last season’s turmoil when Klopp left and a new head coach and sporting director. He arrived, he must not have helped.
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Since becoming Premier League champions in 2020, Liverpool have won three cup finals, unlike Chelsea, but due to injuries, Salah has only played a significant role in one of them.
Around the same time, Liverpool came close to regaining a domestic championship as well as the Champions League. Despite a promising start to the season, the challenge for the name failed.
Salah reflects on this era with some regret, so he is more determined than ever to succeed rather than focus on what comes next. He also knows that a good season for Liverpool will generate demand for him.
Although Liverpool will compare Salah’s role in the team to Arne Slot, Salah is intrigued to see how things will play out in the post-Jurgen Klopp era, and is in no rush to commit.
He remains open-minded about the long term and feels calmer than in the summer of 2022, when it seemed that he and Liverpool would reach a compromise.
This procedure lasted about a year and Abbas described it as the most complicated negotiation of his life. This time around, both sides have less time before Salah’s contract expires.
If it is money, Liverpool is unlikely to be able to compete with a Saudi club. It is widely believed that one of the Saudi Pro League PIF groups will make a bid for Salah. Al Ittihad’s interest has not disappeared, but getting Salah will cost them dearly.
It has not gone unnoticed that the three-year contract presented to Karim Benzema last summer is among the highest in football history, valued at £172 million per year. The annual figure is roughly equivalent to what Salah will have earned over his entire current career. contract with Liverpool if it comes with separate partnership agreements from the club.
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Salah’s popularity in the Middle East would make him one of the recruits for the Saudi Pro League trophy. Like Benzema, he can aspire to deserve it.
In 2022, sporting director Julian Ward travelled to the Greek island of Mykonos, where Salah was on holiday, to complete the formalities for the player’s contract. However, most of the major discussions revolved around owner Fenway Sports Group (FSG) chairman Mike Gordon, who handled the financial details.
With Hughes now in Ward’s position and Gordon leaving his day-to-day duties at Liverpool, it will be attractive to see if Michael Edwards, recently rehired as FSG’s “managing director of football”, emerges as the decision. creator rather than money, given how well Gordon has performed his day-to-day jobs over the years.
Agents who have worked with Gordon beyond his involvement and wonder if he will let that responsibility pass.
However, a mix of numbers at Liverpool will determine whether Salah will be presented with a new contract.
Salah’s age will have to be a factor in the FSG’s thinking. Liverpool’s owner prioritises monetary viability, much to the chagrin of many fans, and has been reluctant to grant long contract extensions to 30-year-olds. Liverpool usually give shorter incentives.
There is also the question of precedents and consequences if Salah is presented with serious situations at this stage of his career. The expense would also have an impact on the choice of the successor in the long term.
Liverpool and Abbas had to show flexibility in 2022 to ensure a deal was reached. On this occasion, they did not have to take into account the interest of the Saudi clubs, whose bulging purse would weaken Liverpool’s position this time.
Salah will serve 33 weeks before the deal expires next June. Although Abbas told Harvard that he believes his player can play up front until he is 40, Liverpool’s knowledge team will analyse whether he slows down. His performance at Ipswich on Saturday prompted Slot to say he believes he “still has many years to play”.
If Liverpool believe that a new contract for Salah does not make economic sense, the discussion with the club’s fans will be more complicated.
If he leaves, the reactions will be different depending on the destination. Many enthusiasts will settle for the demanding situations of competing financially with a Saudi Arabian team, but would be less sympathetic if it stayed in Europe, especially if it ended up in the Premier League. League club after a productive season.
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Salah will not have to jeopardize his legacy at Liverpool by joining one of the club’s former or competitive rivals, Manchester United and Manchester City. It could be a different matter if an offer came from London, a city he likes to visit.
From Liverpool’s point of view, replacing Salah’s functionality would not be easy. Even last season, which did not meet Salah’s standards, he scored at least 25 goals for the fourth consecutive campaign. Some of the most significant knowledge corresponds to each of his last years at the club. His finishing disappointed him, meaning he missed his expected targets (xG) overall for the first time in his Liverpool career.
Typically, a sign of decline is when a player fails to enter a domain to attempt to shoot. Tactics play a role in this evaluation. Under Klopp, Salah found himself in a much wider position in the 2023-24 season compared to the first in 2017-18, when he scored 44 times.
Despite this, Salah finished behind Erling Haaland in xG betting. After suffering a hamstring tear abroad with Egypt, Salah, fitter and more confident this season, may be more difficult than ever.
As Liverpool discovered with Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino, letting wonderful players go is less difficult than locating them.
A Saudi club, such as Al Ittihad, has shown more interest in recent times than any game.
For Salah, however, there is a lot to think about. He loves England, where he can live quietly with his circle of relatives without the kind of surveillance that exists in Egypt. Would you give it up if you went to Saudi Arabia, for example?a Red Sea ferry crossing from your home country?
Saudi Pro League clubs have been equally competitive in their recruitment strategy this summer, so Salah’s arrival next year would reignite the debate over the division’s strength and influence, putting even more emphasis on him.
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If that leaves you with a billion pounds in the bank, the threat of wasting some of your privacy may be worth it.
There is also the geopolitical context. Salah has fought fiercely since adopting a global logo to remain independent of any religion, country or government. He needs to be judged as a footballer, more than by where he comes from or his religion – those points influence who he is.
Given the very important importance of football in Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030 strategy”, moving there would jeopardize its sense of “otherness” and an extension of the state apparatus.
While in Europe it is believed that the most famous Arab footballer on the planet would take advantage of the possibility of returning “home”, Saudi Arabia is Salah’s homeland. He is a regional rival and, according to many Egyptians, a country is seeking to supplant him as the cultural center of the Islamic world. Moving there would necessarily make it more popular.
Salah may also have reservations about the meaning of football in the Saudi Pro League, especially if he continues to perform well. The infrastructure in Saudi Arabia is still catching up and Benzema is frustrated.
Salah can also easily locate a horny offer from the United States. Currently, much of their logo faces west. Lionel Messi is here and the 2026 World Cup, co-hosted in the United States, is approaching, and Egypt is certain to qualify.
Although he would not earn as much money as in Saudi Arabia, a move to Major League Soccer would allow him to play in a department more advanced in his development while also living a lifestyle similar to that of England.
(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)