The day, as he himself called it, has finally come. On March 24, 2026, Mohamed Salah stood in front of a camera, his vast trophy collection visible in the background, and delivered words that no Liverpool fan ever wanted to hear. "I will be leaving Liverpool at the end of this season," he said, his voice steady but unmistakably heavy with emotion.
With those words, the greatest chapter of Anfield's modern era — arguably its greatest individual story since the days of Ian Rush — drew to a close. Confirmed by the club itself moments later, Liverpool announced that an agreement had been reached to cut short Salah's contract — which he had only signed in April 2025 — by a full year, making him a free agent this summer. No transfer fee. No bidding war. Just a quiet, dignified exit, offered early so that Salah could, in his own words, give the supporters the transparency they deserved. For a figure who has defined Premier League football for nearly a decade, this moment was always going to be impossible to process. But before we look forward, we must look back — at a career so decorated, so statistically extraordinary, so full of moments of pure genius, that any summary risks feeling inadequate.
Born on June 15, 1992, in the small village of Nagrig in the Gharbia Governorate of Egypt, Mohamed Salah Ghaly grew up far from the glamour of European football. He began his professional career at El Mokawloon Al Arab before a stadium disaster in Port Said in March 2012 forced the suspension of the Egyptian league, opening a window that would change his life.
Swiss side Basel spotted him in a friendly for the Egypt Under-23s and moved quickly. He thrived at St. Jakob-Park, helping the club to the Swiss Super League title in 2012/13 and reaching the semi-finals of the Europa League, while also memorably scoring in the Champions League against Chelsea — the very club that would soon sign him.
That Chelsea move, completed in January 2014, proved to be a significant detour rather than a destination. José Mourinho could not find room for the rapid Egyptian, and Salah spent the following seasons on loan at Fiorentina and then Roma.
It was in Rome where everything changed. Over two seasons in Serie A, he scored 29 goals in 65 league appearances, dazzling Italian football with his pace, his directness, and an increasingly lethal left foot. Jürgen Klopp, rebuilding Liverpool into a European power, paid a then-club record fee of £36.9 million to bring him to Anfield in the summer of 2017. What followed was, by any measure, one of the most extraordinary individual impacts the Premier League has ever witnessed.
To understand the scale of Salah's contribution to Liverpool, the numbers must be laid bare. At the time of his departure announcement, he has registered 255 goals in 435 appearances for the club — placing him third on Liverpool's all-time scoring chart, behind only Roger Hunt and Gordon Hodgson. His 281 Premier League goal contributions (189 goals, 92 assists) are the highest recorded by any player for a single club in the history of the competition.
| Season | Club | Apps | Goals | Assists |
| 2017/18 | Liverpool | 52 | 44 | 16 |
| 2018/19 | Liverpool | 52 | 27 | 13 |
| 2019/20 | Liverpool | 34 | 23 | 10 |
| 2020/21 | Liverpool | 37 | 22 | 5 |
| 2021/22 | Liverpool | 51 | 31 | 15 |
| 2022/23 | Liverpool | 41 | 30 | 14 |
| 2023/24 | Liverpool | 45 | 25 | 14 |
| 2024/25 | Liverpool | 50 | 47 | 18 |
| 2025/26* | Liverpool | ~25 | ~10 | ~8 |
* 2025/26 figures as of late March 2026. All competitions combined. Sources: LFCHistory, Transfermarkt, NBC Sports.
In the Premier League alone, his record reads 188 goals and 92 assists in 304 appearances, along with four Golden Boot awards — matching the all-time record in the modern era. His Champions League record stands at 47 goals in 82 appearances, making him one of the competition's elite all-time scorers.
Individual numbers do not exist in a vacuum. What separates Salah from mere goal machines is that his production translated directly into silverware — filling a trophy cabinet that would have seemed impossible when he arrived from Roma as Liverpool's record buy.
| Trophy | Year(s) |
| Premier League | 2019/20, 2024/25 |
| UEFA Champions League | 2018/19 |
| FIFA Club World Cup | 2019 |
| UEFA Super Cup | 2019 |
| FA Cup | 2021/22 |
| EFL Cup (League Cup) | 2021/22, 2023/24 |
| FA Community Shield | 2022/23 |
Seven major trophies in nine seasons. And crucially, Salah was not merely present during these triumphs — he was the driving force. His 44 goals in the debut season coincided with a Champions League final run. His 23-goal campaign in 2019/20 helped end Liverpool's 30-year wait for the English title. And his extraordinary 2024/25 season — the best individual campaign of his career — delivered the Premier League title under Arne Slot in the Dutchman's first year in charge.
Beyond the collective honours, Salah has amassed a personal collection of awards that places him among the finest players of his generation — and in the conversation for the greatest player in Premier League history.
Premier League Golden Boot: 2017/18 (32 goals), 2018/19 (22 goals), 2021/22 (23 goals, shared with Heung-min Son), 2024/25 — equalling the all-time record of four Golden Boots.
Premier League Player of the Season: 2017/18, 2024/25
Premier League Playmaker of the Season: 2021/22, 2024/25
PFA Players' Player of the Year: 2017/18, 2021/22, 2024/25 — a three-time winner, the most by any player in the award's history.
Football Writers' Footballer of the Year: 2017/18, 2021/22, 2024/25
African Player of the Year: 2017, 2018 — back-to-back honours cementing his status as the continent's finest footballer.
FIFA Puskás Award: 2018, for his stunning solo goal against Everton in the Merseyside derby.
FIFA Club World Cup Best Player: 2019 — named the outstanding player of the tournament as Liverpool claimed the global crown. His Premier League goal contributions of 281 at a single club are, according to Al Jazeera, the highest ever recorded in the competition's history — a statistic that defines the scale of his dominance over nearly a decade at the top.
Not all of Salah's seasons were created equal. What follows is an analytical ranking of his finest individual campaigns, judged on goals, assists, importance of the matches, collective success, and the overall impression left on the game.
| # | Season | Why It Stands Out | Rating |
| #1 | 2017/18 | 44 goals, 16 assists in 52 apps. A record-breaking debut that rewrote Premier League history. Reached 32 PL goals in a 38-game season — still the benchmark. Champions League final. Changed football. | ★★★★★ |
| #2 | 2024/25 | 29 goals, 18 assists in 50 apps. His most complete season: goals, creativity, leadership. Delivered the title in Slot's debut year. A fairytale final act. | ★★★★★ |
| #3 | 2021/22 | 31 goals, 15 assists in 51 apps. Shared Golden Boot, won FA Cup and League Cup. Showed the full spectrum of his attacking genius. | ★★★★½ |
| #4 | 2018/19 | 27 goals, 13 assists. Won the Champions League — scored the opening penalty in the final. Consistent brilliance across Europe. | ★★★★½ |
| #5 | 2022/23 | 30 goals, 14 assists in 41 apps. Remarkable output despite Liverpool's transitional turbulence under Klopp's fading squad. | ★★★★ |
| #6 | 2019/20 | 23 goals, 10 assists in 34 apps. A Premier League title winner. Played 34 of 38 games. Ended a 30-year wait. Historic. | ★★★★ |
| #7 | 2023/24 | 25 goals, 14 assists in 45 apps. Another double-figures campaign in a year of transition. Reliability when others faltered. | ★★★½ |
History will be generous to Salah, as it should be. But the final chapter of his Liverpool story deserves an honest account. The 2025/26 season has been, by his elevated standards, a difficult one. The relationship with head coach Arne Slot — who had masterminded that brilliant 2024/25 title triumph — appeared to fracture visibly.
In December 2025, after Liverpool's 3-3 draw at Leeds, Salah spoke in terms that made headlines across the globe: he claimed he did not understand why certain people at the club did not want him, and that he felt he had been thrown under the bus.
The fact that he had signed a fresh two-year contract only in April 2025 made the public nature of the fallout all the more striking. The agreement to terminate that contract a year early, freeing him as a free agent this summer, feels like the tidiest possible solution to an increasingly messy situation. No transfer fee changes hands.
Liverpool save on a wage bill that stood at approximately £400,000 per week — among the highest in Premier League history. And Salah, at 33, goes to face whatever comes next unburdened by club politics. Where he goes, nobody knows — including his agent, Ramy Abbas Issa, who stated curtly that no decision had been made regarding his next destination.
The Saudi Pro League, particularly Al-Ittihad, remains the most discussed option, given Salah's own admission in May 2025 that talks with Saudi officials had been "serious." Major League Soccer and Galatasaray have also been mentioned. The transfer market will answer that question in due course.
It is worth pausing on what Mohamed Salah has actually meant — not just to Liverpool, but to football as a whole. He arrived in England as a supposed Chelsea reject, a player who had failed to convince one of Europe's most decorated clubs. He leaves as the Premier League's greatest winger of his era, and quite possibly of all time. He is third on Liverpool's all-time scoring list.
He holds the record for the most Premier League goal contributions for a single club. He has won four Golden Boots. He has three PFA Player of the Year trophies. He has helped deliver every major club honour the game has to offer. He did it while conducting himself, for the vast majority of his time at Anfield, with professionalism and dignity — and with a commitment to charitable causes in his homeland that has made him a figure of national pride for 110 million Egyptians.
Former teammate Andy Robertson put it simply in his tribute: watching Salah become the best at what he does, and become one of the best to ever wear the Liverpool shirt, has been a joy. His current teammates, including Virgil van Dijk and Alexis Mac Allister, offered single words that carry enormous weight in this context: king. Legend.
Arne Slot posted a photograph of the two of them together with a caption that was perhaps the most telling of all: "We had a good run." That is an understatement for the ages.
For all the noise of the final few months, there is no ambiguity about what Mohamed Salah's time at Liverpool represents. It is one of the finest individual tenures in the history of English football. And when the Anfield crowd gives him his farewell — whenever that moment comes before the season ends — the roar will tell its own story.