French League: Lens continues its victories and is approaching the European positions

The brilliance of Egyptian star Mohamed Salah has become something constant and familiar in Liverpool, to the point that sometimes it takes a new voice to remind us that what this player is doing is something exceptional, and it should be viewed as such. That voice was represented by Brentford coach Thomas Frenck, who said before the international break: “Mohamed Salah gets a lot of praise, but I don’t really know if he gets what he deserves and enough praise or not. I now think he is the best player in the Premier League. He has reached exceptional levels in terms of scoring and assisting goals. He has to be one of the best strikers in the world, not among the top 10, but among the top 3 players.”

Frank admitted during the press conference after the match, which his team lost to Liverpool at Anfield by three clean goals, that when he made these statements, he was thinking out loud, and he was not planning to deceive Erling Haaland and Manchester City. But when another manager in the English Premier League, other than Liverpool’s coach Jurgen Klopp, makes these statements about Salah and places him on the list of the top 3 players in the world alongside Haaland, who is 23 years old, and Kylian Mbappe, who is 24 years old, even though… Salah is 31 years old, which means that Liverpool fans are not the only ones who believe and enjoy the greatness and value of the Egyptian striker.

In fact, Salah’s consistent and impressive form, in terms of goals, influence, fitness and motivation, is one of the main reasons why Liverpool head to the Etihad Stadium to face Manchester City, confident of their ability to regain their position as one of the most prominent contenders for the English Premier League title this season. . Klopp described this match as “the match the world pays the most money to watch,” as part of his criticism of the decision to change the start of the match to 12:30 noon on Saturday after the international break. Everyone was waiting for this exciting confrontation between Haaland and Salah, and indeed the two big stars played a decisive role in the result of the match, which ended in a draw with one goal for each team, as Haaland scored Manchester City’s goal, while Salah created the equalizer for Liverpool, which came from the signing of Trent Alexander-Arnold. .

Numbers and statistics indicate that Haaland is the only player who has scored more goals than Salah in the English Premier League this season (14 goals for Haaland compared to 10 goals for Salah), while the Egyptian star excels in the number of assists, as he made 5 goals, compared to 3 for Haaland. Salah’s goals came from 14 “big chances” – by Premier League standards – while Haaland took advantage of 23 big chances. In terms of “creating big chances,” Salah created 11 chances, compared to 3 for Haaland.

It is noteworthy that Salah competes strongly with Haaland in terms of scoring and assisting goals, even though the Egyptian star plays as a right winger and not an outright striker. Salah was also able to adapt to Darwin Nuñez’s playing style after the departure of Roberto Firmino, and in light of the presence of a completely new midfield behind him. But Salah’s goal scoring rate has improved this season, and is his best rate (0.83 goals per game) since his amazing first season with Liverpool in 2017-18, during which he scored 32 goals in 36 Premier League matches (0.88 goals per game) and during which Also awarded the Premier League Player of the Year award from the Football Writers’ Association and the Professional Footballers’ Association.

Salah is only two goals away from scoring 200 goals for Liverpool after 321 matches, although he has already reached 200 goals in English football, given that he scored two goals for Chelsea. During 117 matches in the English Premier League at Anfield, the Egyptian star contributed to 119 goals, in terms of scoring and assisting goals. These are amazing numbers for sure. It is certain that Manchester City’s coach, Pep Guardiola, was well aware of these matters and was thinking carefully about how to eliminate the danger of the Egyptian player. Salah scored in all four matches that his team played against Manchester City during last season, in which City won the historic treble, and overall he scored 11 goals in 18 matches against Manchester City.

Then there are the individual records that Salah seems to be achieving on a weekly basis. Let us take, for example, Liverpool’s last three matches at home. Against Toulouse, Salah came on as a substitute to score his 43rd goal in major European competitions with Liverpool, surpassing French star Thierry Henry as the most decorated player. A goal for an English club in the European Championships.

Three days later against Nottingham Forest, Salah became the third player in Liverpool’s history to score in the club’s first five home league matches in one season, after Harry Chambers in 1922 and John Aldridge in 1987. In the next match against Brentford, Salah broke the record, When he scored a wonderful goal with an exceptional pass, it made the Brentford coach heap praise on Liverpool’s attacking line. He described this goal as “coming from a distinctive imprint of Liverpool’s attacking line.”

Frank added: “As soon as we lost the ball, Liverpool launched a quick counterattack and the ball reached Salah, who put it into the net. But no player can score a goal from such a ball, as what happened reflects the ingenuity and quality of the player and the Liverpool team as a whole.” This goal also means extending Salah’s career in scoring or making goals in English Premier League matches at Anfield to 15 matches, an exceptional career that began last January.

These achievements are not limited to the club level. In his next match after Brentford, Salah scored 4 goals in the match in which the Egyptian national team defeated Djibouti by a clean six-point score, an achievement that made him surpass Mohamed Aboutrika as the all-time top scorer for his country in the World Cup qualifiers with 15 goals. .

But numbers alone cannot summarize or reflect the wonderful levels presented by Salah. The hard work he does, his wonderful behavior, and his leadership abilities all contributed to Liverpool’s recovery this season after the significant decline that occurred in the team’s level last season. Even during difficult days when the team was not at its usual level, such as the Merseyside derby at Anfield last month, the Egyptian striker was decisive. It seems that Salah, along with the giant Dutch defender Virgil van Dijk, the distinguished right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold, and the rest of the main pillars of the team, are determined to compensate for the team’s failure to qualify for the Champions League, and these players have already succeeded in returning Liverpool to its good levels and results.

It should also be noted that Salah has only missed 10 of Liverpool’s league matches since joining the club 7 years ago, including two matches when he was playing with the Egypt national team in the 2022 African Cup of Nations finals. Klopp must find a solution to this problem once again. Another next January, when Salah will miss 4 league matches due to his participation with his country in the African Cup of Nations – including against Chelsea and Arsenal – depending on Egypt’s progress in the tournament. But the Egyptian player has great physical fitness and performs at distinguished levels, and there are no signs of a decline in his level. The Liverpool manager recently joked: “I think if we examined him, we would find that most of his bones would be 19 or 20 years old. He always keeps himself in good shape.”

Liverpool proved they were absolutely right when they rejected a £150m offer from Saudi club Al-Ittihad to sign the Egyptian star less than 3 months ago. But the threat still persists, given that Saudi clubs may continue their quest to sign the most prominent Muslim footballer on the planet, and Salah will enter the final 12 months of his contract with Liverpool next summer. But who can say that the idea of ​​playing in front of limited numbers of fans in the Saudi Professional League appeals to Salah?

Salah’s exceptional numbers, his achievements and his never-ending motivation constitute a convincing argument for extending his contract with Liverpool, even if the recent negotiations with the English club took an extremely long time, and a solution was not reached until just 17 months ago. Regardless of the next step, what Salah achieved with Liverpool is something exceptional that no one can forget or deny. As Klopp said: “We appreciate him, and everyone will appreciate him even more after the end of his career, because then they will say: Oh my God, we were seeing something really special.”

*The Guardian service