Mohamed Salah ranks among the greatest Premier League players of the modern era. The Egyptian winger has lit up English football since joining Liverpool from Roma in 2017, becoming a club icon and one of the division’s most prolific scorers. Now 33, he has confirmed he will leave Anfield at the end of the 2025/26 season.
Salah sits fourth on the all-time Premier League scoring list and is likely to fall just short of Wayne Rooney’s record of 208 league goals before he departs. Supporters have long dubbed him the “Egyptian King,” and former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has spoken warmly of his legacy. “I think he’s going to be one of these players that we’ll all appreciate even more when the day eventually comes when he moves on,” Gerrard said.
Not every former Red has been as complimentary.
Graeme Souness’s blunt assessment
In 2023, after Jürgen Klopp left Salah on the bench for a crucial away game at West Ham and brought him on only in the closing stages, the pair were seen exchanging words on the touchline. Graeme Souness, who made 359 appearances for Liverpool, did not hold back.
Speaking on William Hill’s Three Up Front podcast, the former midfielder said:
“He no doubt has an exceptionally large opinion of himself, and he’ll have been angry at not starting the game against West Ham last week. I think the situation with Jürgen Klopp was a reaction to only being brought on with 10 minutes to go – it was more Salah than it was Klopp in that confrontation.”
Souness went further:
“Salah is the most selfish player I have ever witnessed. Even prior to that game, whenever Klopp takes him off, he is never happy about it. That is what you want from your players – if you take them off on two goals, they should want to stay on to score a third. When Sadio Mané was there they’d fall out all the time.”
In his Times column he added that Salah is “perhaps as greedy a player as I have seen. All the top names have an element of that, but he is extremely selfish.”
Souness also questioned Salah’s appetite for physical confrontation:
“When the going gets tough and another player puts it on him, Salah will disappear from a game. Last season at Old Trafford, Lisandro Martínez went through him early on, and for the rest of the game Salah was looking over his shoulder for Martínez – he doesn’t like that side of the game. He’ll never get himself hurt.”
The contrast is stark. Souness was a hard-tackling, confrontational midfielder; Salah is a graceful, goal-oriented winger. Their views of the game reflect those differences.
Key note: Mohamed Salah has now made more appearances for Liverpool than Graeme Souness did during his time at the club.
Salah’s Liverpool record
Since arriving for £36.5 million in 2017, Salah has been Liverpool’s standout performer season after season and is widely regarded as Jürgen Klopp’s best signing – ahead even of Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker. He broke the Premier League single-season scoring record in his debut campaign and remains among the division’s all-time assist leaders.
With a new contract signed late in the 2024/25 season, he added a second Premier League title to his collection before announcing his departure plans.
Mohamed Salah – Liverpool statistics (correct as of 4 April 2026, via Transfermarkt) Competition Games Goals Assists Premier League 310 189 93 Champions League 82 47 20 Champions League Qualifying 2 1 0 Europa League 9 5 4 Club World Cup 2 0 1 UEFA Super Cup 1 0 0 FA Cup 15 8 2 EFL Cup 11 4 1 Community Shield 4 1 1
Salah leaves as one of Liverpool’s greatest-ever players – a clinical finisher and creator whose selfish streak, in Souness’s view, has been both a strength and a point of contention.
