 "Liverpool's Mohamed Salah applauds fans after Premier League match against Brighton. Reuters")
Egypt has overwhelmingly rallied in support of Mohamed Salah amid the controversy surrounding his future at Liverpool and the breakdown of his relationship with manager Arne Slot.
Salah has found full support from his country after he publicly called out Liverpool for throwing him “under the bus”. He had been left out of the starting XI consistently by Slot and then dropped from the squad altogether for Reds’ trip to Milan in the UEFA Champions League.
“It seems like the club has thrown me under the bus. That’s how I feel it. Someone wants me to get all the blame. [The] club promised me a lot in summer. Now I’m on bench so can say they haven’t kept those promises,” Salah had said ahead of Liverpool’s Champions League.
Egypt backing Salah
While Salah got a lot of flak for his interview from English media, football fans in Egypt were totally behind him.
“This interview was like a revolution in Egypt,” Diaa El-Sayed, the former Egypt assistant coach, told BBC
“99% of Egypt supports Salah, and you can see from the reaction at Anfield that the Liverpool fans support him too.”
“Before Salah, no-one supported Liverpool here,” says Noura Essam, a Cairo local told BBC. “Before Salah, we didn’t have a global figure, so we will always support him.”
Ahmed Gamal Ali, a Cairo-based journalist, said that even if it can be debated whether Salah should have given that interview or not, people in Egypt have already passed their verdict.
“We say he is our son, so we were emotionally taken aback because it felt like a humiliation for one of our family,” says Ali said talking to BBC.
“To see one of our own hurting was shocking and the spontaneous national response was basically autopilot. It would be judgmental to say if he was right or wrong to do the interview, as we didn’t live through his feelings, but this is the mindset of players like him and [Cristiano] Ronaldo.”
Salah finally came back to the ground for Liverpool as a substitute in their 2-0 win over Brighton in the Premier League on Saturday. He now has joined the Egyptian side for the African Cup of Nations where he is aiming to win his first title with Egypt.