Mo Salah, the explosion after the storm
Salah has complained that his relationship with Arne Slot is broken and that his situation at the club is complicated.
Liverpool lost the ground from under their feet for ANOTHER time, at the end of a match that seemed to be theirs. But the real seismic tremor did not occur on the pitch. It came a short time later, from the mouth of the man who has been the club’s most stable compass in the last decade: Mohamed Salah.
The Egyptian winger, who was not used for the third consecutive match, left behind all traces of diplomacy and spoke with rare brutality. He spoke of “promises that were not kept”, of a relationship with his manager, Arne Slot, who (as he said) “disappeared from one day to the next”, of an environment that he feels no longer supports him.
“I feel like I was thrown into the deep end for no reason. Someone wanted to put all the blame on me. We agreed on many things in the summer, but nothing was kept. Staying on the bench for three games proves it,” he stressed with a rare, human honesty.
And he continued, revealing something that seems to be reaching the end of a cycle:
“Yesterday I called my mother. I knew beforehand that I wouldn’t start. I said to her: ‘Come to the game with Brighton. I don’t know if I’ll play, but I’ll enjoy it. Maybe it’s the last time I’ll be at Anfield to say goodbye to the fans.’Then I’ll go to the Africa Cup of Nations.”
The atmosphere in Liverpool is tense
These statements fell like a nuclear explosion on Merseyside and gave new fuel to the already tense atmosphere surrounding Salah’s future.
The Elland Road thriller: Liverpool never learn. All this on a night where Liverpool found themselves once again imprisoned by their own weaknesses. Despite leading 2-0 away, thanks to two goals from forward Ekiti in two minutes, the second-half rodeo threatened to swallow them up – and eventually did.
In the first half, the Reds looked hesitant, trapped in slow traffic and a Jones crossbar that looked more like promise than a sign of superiority. But in the second half the game ignited abruptly. Leeds came back through a Calvert-Lewin penalty and a goal from Stach, before Szoboszlai, temporarily put Liverpool back in a winning position with an ideal position.
And yet, when everything seemed to indicate that Slot would get a valuable three-point, the knife came: 90+7’ – Tanaka at the far post, 3-3, and Anfield once again immersed in anxiety.
Liverpool trapped in itself
The team seems to be living the same story over and over again: building a lead, losing it, fighting to regain it and in the end leaving two points on the field. A team that is exciting, but at the same time dangerously vulnerable. And all this in a period when its greatest ally, Salah, seems more distant than ever.
The only thing certain after the night at Elland Road is that the crisis is not limited to the field of play. It has already spread to relationships, to balances, to identities. Liverpool is not only at risk from its opponents. She is in danger from her own shadow.
Manos Staramopoulos
Journalist and Analyst of International Football and Affairs
Chief Editor English Zone of Discoveryfootball.com
Athens (Greece).
Post recientes
