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In time, Mohamed Salah will get the flowers he has so consistently been denied throughout his extraordinary, one-of-a-kind Premier League career with Liverpool.
And not the usual flowers: “I think Mohamed Salah will go down as one of Liverpool’s best ever players”, or, “Mohamed Salah gets into a Premier League all-time XI.”
We're talking about rightful recognition as not just a Liverpool legend – not “one of” in a list of almost always inferior players – but as the greatest to ever grace the English top-flight.
Mohamed Salah is the greatest the Premier League has ever seen
It's difficult to understand why Mohamed Salah’s name has seemingly been gatekept from wiggling its way into debates regarding the best-ever Premier League player.
On one hand, there’s the seemingly impenetrable fortress of nostalgia blocking any recent top-flight talents from breaking onto the list; on the other, there’s a bizarrely persistent emphasis on ‘aesthetics’ as a defining factor that eliminates Salah from the debate.
Let’s run it down. No player in Premier League history has as many PFA Players’ Player of the Year awards (three) as Mohamed Salah. No player has won more Golden Boots (three) than Salah.
No player has more non-penalty goals (31) in a single 38-game season, or as many goal involvements (47) in a single 38-game season, with both of those records coming in separate campaigns.
No player has more open-play assists (18) in a single season and, for such a historic goal-scorer, the Egyptian has taken home the Playmaker Award come the season’s end twice.
No player in football history – except for Lionel Messi – has won the Golden Boot and the Playmaker Award, being the league's greatest scorer and creator, in the same season twice… and Salah.
Not even Cristiano Ronaldo, Luis Suarez or Neymar could do it once, while doing it twice is almost incomprehensible.
Let’s continue. No player has won more points via their goal contributions in a single season than Mohamed Salah, who did so en route to an elusive Premier League title that his club had failed to win in front of fans for 35 years.
Across his first eight seasons for Liverpool in the Premier League, the Egyptian averaged 34 goal contributions per top-flight campaign. For reference, only two players in that eight-year window recorded more than 34 involvements – Erling Haaland and Harry Kane, who achieved a higher number once each.
For eight seasons, during which the Egyptian won the Premier League twice, Carabao Cup twice, FA Cup, Super Cup, Club World Cup as Player of the Tournament, and brought Liverpool to Champions League glory, Salah’s average top-flight haul outperformed the very best seasons from England’s two scariest strikers.
Statistically, there is nobody that close to Salah. Thierry Henry’s claim comes nearest – a slightly higher scorer on average than the Egyptian – but falls short when you see the disparity that exists between their assist totals.
Despite being a joint-holder of the Premier League assist record, Henry failed to record over 10 assists in six of his eight top-flight seasons, while Salah failed to do so in just two.
If we compare a single season of Mohamed Salah’s prime, his debut 2017/18 campaign, with Cristiano Ronaldo’s Ballon D’or season in 2007/08, the results are not what so many football fans would have you believe.
Salah scored more Premier League goals, tallied more Premier League assists, scored more Champions League goals and tallied more Champions League assists.
Both players made it to the biggest European final, and en route, Salah scored more knock-out goals and recorded more knock-out assists than the Portuguese icon.
But here's the kicker. For such a remarkable player to watch in Ronaldo, compared to the often described as ‘stiff' and 'robotic’ Salah, the Portuguese star completed just ten more dribbles than him across both competitions: 126 for Ronaldo to 116 for Salah.
And while some would argue comparing the statistics of a ‘striker’ in Salah to a ‘midfielder’ in Ronaldo isn’t fair, the Manchester United man scored twice the number of goals in the six-yard box as Salah, and took four times more penalties.
In fact, during 'midfielder' Ronaldo’s prime years in the Premier League, 2006 to 2009, he averaged almost six shots taken per 90 minutes, compared to 'striker' Salah’s less than 4 shots per 90 during his Liverpool career.
So, what is the difference between that version of Salah and that version of Ronaldo if not solely the team they had around them?
Because when Salah fails to be disproven statistically, the argument suddenly becomes about team trophies. Strangely, the same argument is not pitted against Thierry Henry's claim, who won the same number of Premier League titles as the Egyptian and was unable to take Arsenal to the European perch, unlike Salah.
If you point out the flawed logic in using team trophies to decide a player's greatness, because surely that would make Ryan Giggs the all-time best, then the back-up argument emerges.
“But Ronaldo won the Ballon D’or!” – which is just as odd, because we fail to see such passion for Michael Owen being the best Premier League striker ever. Perhaps those same fans would take significant offence to suggesting Rodri is a greater midfielder than Xavi, Iniesta, or Lampard and Gerrard.
They say that records are made to be broken, but it remains very likely that, in our lifetimes, some of Mohamed Salah’s records will be immortal. In time, Premier League fans will begin to wonder why those records cannot be broken.
It feels unlikely that we will see a player equal or top Salah's three PFA POTY victories any time soon, considering that nobody in the award's 60-year history could do so before the Egyptian arrived in this league.
Just as the NBA's MVP award was recently re-named after Michael Jordan, who won a still unbeaten five trophies, how long will it be before the PFA should consider naming their award after Salah?
In years to come, when every great's name that anyone can raise falls to the Salah sword, Premier League fans will slowly realise what their league had, and what their league lost.
While it's a sad day to witness the individual pinnacle of Premier League greatness leave the English top-flight, it's also a day to remember everything that he gave us.
And those memories will last forever. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing the name 'MOHAMED SALAH' in match-day broadcast graphics for years to come.
