For his attitude, his dedication and his fitness, Ray Houghton has compared the Egyptian striker to Cristiano Ronaldo and the former Liverpool title winner makes a very valid point
Unlike Ruben Amorim down the road in Manchester this week, Arne Slot pretty much had a full squad of senior players to supervise when he turned up for his first day of work at Liverpool’s training complex in the summer.
And when the pleasantries were completed, the Dutch coach ran his men into the ground. First things first, Slot wanted to know the fitness levels of every single player at his disposal.
The days of footballers returning from their holidays carrying a good few pounds extra and trying to sweat them off by wearing a bin-liner on a run are long gone.
But some are fitter than others. And when the results came back to Slot, who was top of the charts? One of the young thrusters determined to impress the new manager on day one?
No. Instead, it was a player who had just turned 32 years of age and needed to prove nothing to anybody. And even now, ten goals and ten assists into Mohamed Salah’s season, that still impresses Slot.
After Salah’s latest Premier League goal – for which he ran half the length of the pitch before nonchalantly embarrassing Aston Villa’s Emiliano Martinez – Slot had this to say about his Egyptian striker: “It is pleasing to have him where he is at the moment and it is not a coincidence because the first day I arrived over here, we had a fitness test and he was our fittest player.
“That tells you what his plans were for the season and it also tells you that a player who has so many great seasons at a club like this comes back like that … that tells you a lot about his personality.”
It was a telling comment, telling in the way Slot wanted to highlight Salah’s physical AND mental dedication. For Liverpool’s first goal last Saturday, Salah again led the counter-attack, out-sprinting 27-year-old Leon Bailey.
The naked eye suggests Salah has become quicker over recent seasons. But Salah’s explosiveness is probably not the most significant thing about his fitness. The most significant thing is Salah’s robustness.
Since joining Basel in 2012, Salah has been unavailable for only THIRTY-EIGHT matches. That is for club and country. That is 38 over 13 seasons. For three of those, Covid kept him out of action and concussion was responsible for another.
When a hamstring problem kept him out for 39 days in the second half of last season, that was, by some distance, his longest spell in the treatment room. And bear in mind, this is a player who gets an inordinate amount of physical attention from opponents.
That robustness – combined with his fitness and athleticism – is one of the reasons why Liverpool should not baulk at offering Salah a contract that will extend his stay at Anfield by two or even three years. There is absolutely nothing to suggest Salah will not be able to operate at his current rarefied level in the Premier League for another three seasons after this one.
Former Liverpool title winner Ray Houghton had this to say about Salah: “Look at what Cristiano Ronaldo has done to himself and how he has kept himself in prime condition. It’s about attitude of mind, it’s about living the right way, it’s about applying yourself. The best example is Ronaldo … and I think Mo is in that category.” And Ray is right.
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