Revealed: The reality about Mohamed Salah and Jurgen Klopp’s uneasy marriage at Liverpool

Mohamed Salah never worshipped at the altar of the messiah, Jurgen Klopp.

Some Liverpool players spoke positively in public about the manager, even though privately they talked about him differently. Klopp would scream at some of them and in the same week, they would describe him generously as a father figure in interviews.

It seemed they were petrified about what would happen if they said what they really thought. Salah did not conform to that kind of diplomacy, despite a relationship with Klopp which was professional, mutually respectful and almost always cordial.

When Salah signed for Liverpool, Klopp gushed in his appraisal of the player’s talents: ‘He is willing and eager to be even better. His pace is incredible, he gives us more attacking threat.’

Though Salah quietly enjoyed having a sense of place, he did not need a coach holding his hand. He did not require an arm around the shoulder. The most important decisions about the direction of his life were based on discussions held with his lawyer, Ramy Abbas.

When one notable reporter implied Klopp had helped resolve Salah’s contract issues in 2022, he was promptly informed by Abbas that this was not the case.

It had been the club recruitment team’s determination that led Salah to Liverpool and he felt as though he’d since built his own reputation, and he felt as though he’d since built his own reputation, evidenced by the fact that he scored on his debut and did not stop.

It was not as if Klopp had been patient with him, waiting for him to deliver. Until his arrival, Liverpool were a promising team but Salah’s goals made it seem as though they could beat anyone and achieve anything.

Salah would tell friends that he learned more from Luciano Spalletti at Roma, especially about the defensive side of the game. Spalletti, he thought, was the best coach he’d worked for, and the one he developed the quickest under. Though he was more prolific in front of goal, he continued at Liverpool what he was already doing in Rome.

If anyone else deserved credit for his performances at Liverpool, it was his team-mates, rather than a manager whom he respected but felt as though he did not owe the whole world.

Liverpool’s pursuit of Salah began three years before Klopp walked into Anfield. But wooed by Jose Mourinho’s texts and personal attention, the Egyptian opted for Chelsea instead.

It was after Mourinho’s affections moved elsewhere and Salah had headed, via Fiorentina, to Rome, that Liverpool renewed their interest. Yet as 2016 turned into 2017, Klopp thought more favourably about Bayer Leverkusen winger Julian Brandt.

Klopp was keen on a bigger name than Salah, but Liverpool’s head of recruitment, Dave Fallows, doubled down on his view that Salah would be a success at Liverpool, deciding it was unwise to present alternatives. From his experience, the more names you mention, the more confused a manager becomes, crowding his mind.

Klopp could see Fallows was not budging and the latter would insist over and over again that Salah was the player he needed. He had been watching him for years and he knew that he was desperate to prove himself in England after what happened at Chelsea. He was hungry. It was not often this sort of opportunity came up.

At the start of Salah’s first season at Liverpool, he and Sadio Mane would chat quietly on neighbouring tables in the treatment room, enjoying each other’s company. By the start of Salah’s second season (Mane’s third, having arrived from Southampton in the summer of 2016), however, the dynamic had changed.

Mane was an extremely popular player with Liverpool’s fanbase but Salah’s extraordinary goalscoring achievements in 2017–18 had placed him higher. They were both attacking players from the same continent and followed the same faith.

Mane believed Salah had benefited from his own selflessness and asked club staff to establish precisely how many of Salah’s debut season goals had involved him. The figure was north of 30 per cent. It frustrated Mane that Salah had been chosen to take on penalty-kick responsibilities from James Milner, who was not always in the starting XI.

The awkwardness between Mane and Salah increased. Staff said Salah could see Mane was trying to compete with him. Sometimes, when Salah would be talking to physios in the treatment rooms, Mane would walk in and Salah would stop speaking. ‘Sadio increasingly saw Mo as a rival,’ said one staff member.

Liverpool’s players recognised that Salah’s goals placed him on a higher pedestal than anyone. Yet it also annoyed some of them, including Roberto Firmino, that he could sometimes be greedy. Firmino knew how to manage his frustrations, while Mane did not.

On the pitch, there were accusing glances whenever the ball wasn’t passed properly, or if a move ended badly. Klopp did not intervene directly but addressed the issue in front of the whole squad by insisting that whenever a team-mate was in a better position, the ball had to be passed.

Four games into Salah’s third season, Liverpool were closing in on their fourth victory in a row at Burnley when Klopp substituted Mane. Moments earlier, Salah had tried to create an opportunity for himself rather than pass to Mane, who was in a better position.

Klopp’s decision to then substitute Mane prompted a series of angry gestures caught on camera as he left the pitch, with Mane continuing his complaints as he simmered on the bench.

Inside the dressing room, Klopp chose to say nothing about the incident. He would call both of the players into a meeting at Melwood the following week, where he insisted whatever was going on simply had to stop.

In those early years, another divide between the pair emanated from the reality that Mane was firmly Klopp’s signing, while the arrival of Salah had more to do with the club’s scouting network.

Throughout his first six months at the club, Klopp would tell staff regularly how highly he regarded Mane, openly suggesting he was a player who would do well for Liverpool. While Mane felt as though Klopp had his back, Salah was aware that Klopp’s preference in his case had been to sign Brandt.

Though Salah sometimes frustrated others on the pitch because of his single-mindedness, many understood he was the Liverpool player opponents really feared. All of this, over many years, carried on eating away at Mane, who felt undervalued. Eventually, it would contribute towards him leaving the club.

Ahead of the 2022 Champions League final in Paris, Liverpool owner John W Henry checked into the Cheval Blanc hotel, near the banks of the Seine.

Abbas, Salah’s representative, had also booked one of the art-deco building’s 72 rooms, and it amused him that Henry did not recognise him as they ate at nearby tables at the rooftop bar.

Henry had no direct involvement in contract talks. But he had developed a rather curious, close working relationship with Manchester United’s chief executive Ed Woodward over Project Big Picture, a plan hatched by the owners of Liverpool and United to shake up how money was redistributed across English football clubs.

Woodward had told Henry that goalkeeper David de Gea’s 2019 contract at Old Trafford had changed the expectation of United’s players. There was interest in Salah from Paris Saint-Germain, but Salah wanted to win the Ballon d’Or, and only one player in the award’s history (Marseille’s Jean-Pierre Papin) had been stationed in France at the point of being a recipient. Manchester City? That would have to be forced, and it would mangle his legacy at Anfield.

Liverpool thought they were in a strong position, stronger than the player realised at times. Salah was an extraordinary footballer but it was the wrong moment to start a bidding war.

Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester City and Chelsea had proven themselves as the only clubs capable of signing Liverpool’s best players but none of them were in the market for Salah. It seemed to Liverpool’s directors and money men that Salah had nowhere to go.

As Salah’s frustrations grew, he met two reporters from one of Spain’s bestselling newspapers, AS, at a secure location on Merseyside, the day after scoring in a win over Tottenham in December 2020. The interview was published in Q&A format and was not overly illuminating but for a few of Salah’s responses.

One was the revelation that he was ‘very disappointed’ at being overlooked for the role of stand-in captain when Liverpool played a dead-rubber fixture with Midtjylland in the Champions League at the start of that month. He also described Real and Barcelona as ‘top clubs’, suggesting a new deal at Anfield was in the hands of decision-makers at Liverpool.

Inside Liverpool’s dressing room, some felt Salah’s comments were disrespectful to Trent Alexander-Arnold, the skipper that night. Liverpool interpreted Salah’s interview as a deliberate attempt to connect with a Spanish audience, driving up interest and strengthening his hand when it eventually came to discussions that might start the following summer, two years ahead of the expiration of his contract.

The interview appeared online just before the team travelled to London for a Premier League fixture with Crystal Palace. Klopp chortled at the suggestion the interview was a distraction.

Yet he did not include Salah in the starting line-up. Some of Liverpool’s players interpreted this decision as Klopp’s way of reminding everyone who was in charge and that his authority should never be questioned publicly.

It was noted by some players that, as Klopp debriefed the team inside the dressing room, Salah was barely listening, instead quietly readying himself for a departure from the stadium.

Some of Liverpool’s staff believed that Salah’s relationship with Klopp shifted that day, though the real dynamic was obvious all along to those who really knew the pair.

Klopp tended to get through more to those with greater insecurities.

Footballers who lacked father figures in their lives, for example, tended to respond better to his paternal approach — at least away from training sessions where he was hard on everyone. He was closer to these types of players, including Virgil van Dijk and Mane. Mane had lost his dad at an early age, Van Dijk preferred to wear the name ‘Virgil’ on the back of his shirt after his parents separated when he was 12 years old.

Salah did not expect a manager to help develop him as a person. There was, therefore, a gap between Klopp’s instincts and what Salah felt he really needed.

Ultimately, Abbas helped break the contract impasse by offering Liverpool some of the player’s image rights. Salah’s three-year contract was worth a basic salary of £350,000 a week, with bonuses that would push it towards £400,000.

Abbas had wondered whether or not Liverpool really wanted to do the deal, such was their reluctance. When the offer came through that clinched an agreement, he sensed Liverpool secretly hoped they might reject it.

Klopp was hugely relieved. ‘I’ve no doubt Mo’s best years are still to come,’ he said. ‘That’s saying something, because the first five seasons here have been the stuff of legend. He’s a machine. His ability gets higher each season.’

In the autumn of 2023, Salah registered his 200th goal in English football. By now, his status at Liverpool was so secure that he was able to develop routines without being challenged.

Like the one ahead of games, as the players waited in the tunnel before warming up, where he casually leaned on one shoulder on the opposite wall to his teammates. Liverpool’s players noticed this but they would never question him: all footballers have curious rituals. To cynical minds, it was his way of reminding everyone how different he was.

Normally, only Klopp would stand on the same side of the corridor as him. No other player was bold enough to position himself near the manager. Meanwhile, it showed that Klopp, who always embraced him forcefully rather than lovingly in these moments, was subtly willing to give him a special status. Nobody else was afforded the same freedom. Klopp realised Salah trained and performed at his best when he felt as though he was important.

After the 2022 Champions League defeat in Paris, he was distraught, telling friends he was reluctant to join the parade for the Carabao Cup and FA Cup wins back on Merseyside the following day. It was Salah’s view that in small moments, Liverpool had been undone tactically, while the substitutions had not worked for the team. The players were not to blame for that. He had never felt so deflated in his career.

Salah started to openly question the environment he was working in, including Klopp and his methods. In April of this year, Salah was not the only player to voice his concern after defeat in the Merseyside derby left Liverpool’s title challenge in tatters.

Klopp reacted by making a raft of changes to the starting XI in the next game, at West Ham, and Salah was left on the bench.

Another deflating performance and result in London followed, with West Ham equalising to make it 2–2 just as Klopp was preparing to make a triple substitution, including the introduction of Salah. Klopp, in a bad moment, reacted to West Ham’s goal by saying a few words to Salah, and team-mates intervened to hold the player back. If Salah had viewed Klopp as a figure of authority, it was clear he did not any more.

Only a few people were close enough to know exactly what was said and a variety of accounts circulated out of Liverpool’s dressing room. The most believable story involved Klopp’s fury at the amount of time it had taken Salah to get ready, only for the player to tell him he could not be responsible for West Ham’s goal because he was not on the pitch. Salah, after seven years’ service, felt as if he’d been ditched by a manager at the end of their working relationship, scolding him in public for his own mistakes.

When it ends like this, with a petulant scene when you are 32 years old, and it starts to get said you are not the same player as you once were, it might be tempting to believe it yourself, but Salah can at least look to the data for reassurance.

In 2023–24, he created more chances for other players than at any other point in his Liverpool career. No other Premier League player created more clear-cut opportunities than Salah.

As Liverpool toured the USA this summer, Salah would spend his evenings bunkered in his hotel room re-watching his performances in the friendly matches. His quest for self-improvement is not over.

Adapted from Chasing Salah by Simon Hughes (Constable £25), to be published 7th November. © Simon Hughes 2024. To order a copy for £22.50 (offer valid to 15/11/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937