Tension at Liverpool has reached breaking point with the situation of Mohamed Salah. The Egyptian, one of the club’s most decorated icons of the last decade, sparked a media storm following his speech in the mixed zone at Elland Road, where the Reds had just drawn 3-3 against Leeds United, who are fighting for survival. At 33 years of age, and at a particularly delicate time for the club, Salah hinted at his frustration at being a substitute.
His words, more than an outburst, seemed like a guided missile. And he also sent a message to a legend of the club: “I’m sorry, I know the club too well. I’ve been here for many years. So tomorrow you’ll find out that Carragher is going to try to catch me again and again”.
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Carragher’s response
As expected, the former defender’s response was not long in coming. Carragher, never shy about expressing an opinion and even less so when he feels Liverpool’s integrity is at stake, hit back with rarely seen bluntness: “I think it was a disgrace what he did after the game. Some people have painted it as an emotional outburst, but I don’t think it was.” For him, Salah’s actions were not a spur-of-the-moment impulse, but a carefully premeditated strategy.
According to the former centre-back, each of Salah’s rare appearances in the mixed zone responds to a choreography between the player and his agent, designed to “cause maximum damage and strengthen his own position”. In other words, a calculated move to put pressure on the board in the midst of a sporting crisis.
Carragher went even further by recalling a similar episode that happened a year ago: “He did it 12 months ago and I called him out on this show. It moved the Liverpool fans. The team was top of the league, he had scored the winning goal at Southampton, and he chose that moment to put pressure on the board”.
The parallel Carragher draws is revealing. For him, Salah meticulously selects moments of greatest emotional fragility in the Reds’ environment to send messages that generate noise, debate and, ultimately, personal gain. If in 2023 it was at the height of collective performance, now he does so when the club is going through its worst run since the 1950s.
The phrase that is generating the most buzz among fans is devastating: “He has chosen this weekend to do it now and has waited for a bad result. He has chosen this moment to attack the coach and maybe try to get him sacked”.
