Liverpool FC are going through significant changes right now. With Andoni Iraola confirmed as the newly appointed manager, the club will look and feel very different from the side Arne Slot built.
One positive development amid all the transition is that Alisson Becker's contract has been extended for another year. There were serious discussions earlier this summer about his potential departure, and Emi Martinez's name was floated as a replacement, but those conversations never progressed beyond the initial stage. You can read the full report about this in a recently published analysis from Goal.com.
What does represent a confirmed departure, however, is Mohamed Salah's exit with the Egyptian forward completing a move to Trabzonspor this summer. It marks the end of a nine-year chapter that redefined what one footballer can mean to a club, and it raises a question that answers itself: how could anyone who watched him ever forget what he did at Anfield?
When Salah arrived at Liverpool in 2017, the club had not won the league title in 27 years. He walked into Melwood, glanced at the honours boards lining the walls, and within 12 months had produced the second-most prolific individual season in Liverpool's history. He scored 44 goals across all competitions in his debut campaign, the most by any player in their first season for the club, surpassing Fernando Torres' previous benchmark of 33.
By October 2018, he had reached 50 club goals in just 65 appearances: by far the fewest games any Liverpool player had ever needed to hit that milestone. The record had previously belonged to Albert Stubbins, who took 77 games. Salah didn't just break records at Liverpool. He shattered them and moved the markers so far forward that they may never be threatened again.
His final tally of 257 goals for the club places him third in Liverpool's all-time scoring charts, behind only Roger Hunt and the incomparable Ian Rush. He finished with 191 Premier League goals for the Reds, more than any other player for a single club in the competition's history, surpassing Wayne Rooney's 183 for Manchester United. Those are numbers that belong on a monument, not just a statistics page.
Records only tell part of the story. What makes Salah's legacy so complete is that the goals came attached to genuine, historic success.
He was central to Liverpool's Champions League triumph in Madrid in 2019. A year later, he was part of the squad that ended a 30-year wait for the league title: a moment that meant everything to Liverpool supporters who had grown tired of hearing about those missing years.
He also contributed to a FIFA Club World Cup victory, an FA Cup, a League Cup, and then, in his final season, a second Premier League title, this time with 29 goals and 18 assists, both division highs. He left having won every major honour available to him in club football. That is not a common thing.
Plenty of great footballers score goals. What made Salah different was the discipline and obsession he brought to every aspect of his performance. His daily routine (multiple gym sessions, ice baths, yoga, Pilates, and 15 to 20 minutes of daily meditation) was built around one goal: staying at the highest level for as long as possible.
He controlled his diet with the same precision he applied to finishing, eating five or six balanced meals a day and avoiding sugar entirely. He even installed a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at home to accelerate recovery.
These habits were not incidental. No Liverpool player had ever maintained that level of output for that long. Salah did it while simultaneously carrying the weight of being the team's most important attacking threat every single year.
His mental approach was equally impressive. He played chess regularly to sharpen his decision-making. He meditated with purpose. He arrived in Europe from a small village in Egypt after travelling nine hours a day by bus to train as a teenager, and he never lost the drive that journey built into him. When he doubted himself early in his career and told his father he wanted to quit, the response he received shaped everything that followed. He remembered it. He carried it.
Salah became something bigger than football at Liverpool. He was credited with increasing social cohesion across the city, and studies showed measurable reductions in local hate crimes during his time at the club.
Salah himself said he wanted to be remembered at Liverpool. He said it early, when he first arrived, and he repeated it as his time drew to a close. What he may not have fully anticipated was just how completely he would fulfil that ambition. Trabzonspor will have a great footballer on their hands. Liverpool will have a legend on their walls for as long as the club exists.