He sat on the bench for 90 minutes, motionless except for the occasional shift in his seat, staring out onto a field he once ruled. Mohamed Salah had never watched a Liverpool match from this kind of distance before, not like this—three matches in a row, no injury, no explanation that made sense. Just a superstar placed suddenly on the periphery. For a club that has built entire seasons, trophies, and marketing campaigns around the Egyptian forward, his absence from the pitch felt less like a tactical decision and more like an omen. For Salah, it felt like a betrayal.
He would later try to describe the feeling—confusion, disappointment, disbelief—but the words he chose were sharper than anyone expected. It seemed, he said, as though the club had “thrown him under the bus.” He said he felt singled out. He said he felt someone wanted him out. And in that instant, a private rift became a public crisis.
Football has a long history of stars clashing with clubs, but Salah has never fit the stereotype of a disruptive talent. His rise was built on discipline, humility, and a near ascetic devotion to improvement. At Liverpool, he became something rarer still: not just a scorer of great goals, but a symbol of a club reborn. His story belonged to everyone—Egyptians who saw their hero redefine global representation, Africans who embraced his success as their own, Liverpudlians who tied him to the fabric of their city, fans worldwide who saw in him a model of excellence without ego.
And so when Salah stood in the mixed zone at Elland Road, speaking with a soft but unmistakable bitterness about being benched again, the shock rippled beyond Merseyside. He did not yell. He did not accuse anyone directly. But he made clear that trust had fractured, promises had broken, and the relationship he once cherished had “no connection” anymore. This was not a transfer rumor. It was a rupture.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “The third time on the bench. For the first time in my career. I have done so much for this club… now I’m sitting on the bench and I don’t know why.” He kept returning to the same idea—respect. That he had earned it. That he had upheld his end of the bargain. That he was now forced to defend himself for reasons he didn’t understand.
Even his mother knew before the papers did. “Come to the Brighton game,” he told her. “I don’t know if I am going to play or not, but I am going to enjoy it.” He didn’t explain why. He didn’t have to. There was something in the way he said “enjoy.” Something that hinted he wasn’t sure if this was the end or simply the beginning of an end. Something preparing her—preparing himself—for a farewell he could not yet name.
Liverpool has benched stars before. Liverpool has sold stars before. But never one quite like this, never after a season in which he won every major individual award the English game offers, never while he is still the club’s most dangerous attacker. And so each minute he spent sitting quietly behind the manager’s technical area felt less like a tactical adjustment and more like a message—one loud enough for Salah to hear, even if no one explained it to him directly.
What makes Salah’s case uniquely raw is not just the footballing context but the emotional territory. Liverpool’s identity is built on the notion that this club is different, that its relationship with players—especially those who become icons—is deeper, more loyal, more protective. Not even in the most difficult days under Klopp did Salah feel unappreciated or unshielded. The club defended him. The manager cherished him. The fans adored him. The idea that he could suddenly become a scapegoat for a stuttering start felt, to him, incomprehensible.
He invoked examples because that’s what footballers do when they feel vulnerability turning into unfairness. He remembered how Harry Kane once went ten matches without scoring and was still shielded by pundits. Salah has scored more goals and produced more assists since he arrived in England than any other player. Yet he found himself alone, unprotected, reduced to explaining his worth to the public while the club stayed silent.
“If I was somewhere else,” he said, “every club would protect its player.”
Throughout the interview, Salah kept insisting he did not know who was behind his sudden demotion. He refused to point fingers. He would not blame teammates, and he made sure to insist that the players had shown him nothing but love. His anger was not directed sideways. It was directed upward, into the fog of club politics—into promises made in private meetings, into decisions made without explanation, into the widening space between himself and a manager with whom he once felt aligned.
What hurt him most was the silence. He asked for explanations. He got none he believed in. Instead, he was asked to “swallow it,” as he put it, and go home.
Salah has never been naïve about the business of football. Contracts matter. Timing matters. Age matters. Once he turned 30, conversations inevitably shifted toward the future—whether Liverpool could keep him, whether he should explore a new chapter. But last spring, when he signed a contract extension, it felt like a declaration. He believed, genuinely, that he could finish his career at Anfield. He believed the relationship was mutual. To him, the extension was a promise. To the club, perhaps it was leverage.
“Imagine how bad I feel that I have to answer whether I regret signing,” he said. “That hurts. Even the question hurts.”
Yet he answered it. He said he didn’t regret it. He said he loved the club too much to regret anything. And even in the middle of disappointment, he kept speaking of Liverpool not with bitterness but with a kind of aching nostalgia—like someone suddenly realizing the thing they spent years building may be disappearing before their eyes.
The interviews that shake football’s foundations rarely come from a place of anger. They come from heartbreak. From a sense of dignity violated. From a belief that loyalty should mean something. His words were blunt, but they were not the words of a player trying to force his way out. They were the words of someone trying to understand how a relationship he valued could unravel so quickly, so publicly, and so quietly behind the scenes.
In Liverpool, his comments hit the city like weather—fast, emotional, impossible to ignore. Salah has been more than a forward to the people here. He has been part of families, part of weekends, part of childhoods. Parents described sons crying when they heard. Taxi drivers spent entire shifts debating who was at fault. Local radio buzzed for days. This was not merely a sports story anymore. It was civic news.
And within the squad, the reaction was quieter but no less significant. Players are too professional to speak publicly. But inside Kirkby, the message circulated: if it can happen to Mo, it can happen to anyone. It was not rebellion. It was not mutiny. It was recognition of how the ground can shift beneath even the most dependable feet. That kind of recognition changes dressing rooms.
The practical questions now fall to the board. Salah’s age, market value, and global appeal place him in a category few players occupy. Saudi clubs are ready to move again. The January window opens soon. Liverpool must weigh finances, optics, fan sentiment, and dressing-room harmony. Selling him would be lucrative, destabilizing, and publicly damaging. Keeping him without repairing the relationship might be worse. Doing nothing is no longer an option.
And yet the truth remains that Salah himself seems genuinely uncertain about what comes next. He insists he does not want this to be the end. He insists he still loves the fans, still loves the club, still believes in everything they built. But he also insists he cannot accept the current situation, that he cannot pretend promises were kept when they were not, that he cannot stay silent while being painted as the problem.
That last point may be the most revealing. Salah has always been protective of his image—but not out of vanity. Out of responsibility. He knows he represents more than himself. Millions look to him as a symbol of what success can look like when achieved without arrogance or controversy. Being framed as a disciplinary issue, or a declining star, or a source of dressing-room tension undermines everything he has built.
He has spent years accumulating respect. He will not allow it to be stripped from him quietly.
And so football pauses, as it often does, in the breath between breaking news and irreversible decisions. The Brighton match hangs like a farewell the fans aren’t ready for and Salah never imagined. The Africa Cup of Nations could mark the point of no return—either he leaves during the tournament or he returns to a relationship too strained to repair.
Still, there remains a possibility—slim, improbable, but real—that this moment becomes a catalyst, not an ending. That both sides step back from the cliff and remember what they once meant to each other. That apologies are exchanged. That trust is rebuilt. That the story does not have to end in bitterness.
But for now, nothing is certain except the feeling that the landscape has shifted. Mohamed Salah, who arrived quietly and conquered emphatically, now stands at the most precarious crossroads of his Liverpool life. He has said his piece. He has revealed his hurt. He has made public what was private.
Whatever comes next—whether a transfer, reconciliation, or reinvention—his words have already changed the story.
And football waits.
Full transcript of Salah’s bombshell interview
What were you thinking sat on the bench?
“I don’t know what to say. It’s funny but I couldn’t believe it. It is a really disappointing result for us as a team because we expect to win a game like that.
“We managed to score two goals in the beginning and the game was going in our direction but we conceded silly goals.
“It’s not only [about] us, it is also the team we face. In the last games I saw of them, they made it hard for Man City in the second half. I saw the same against Chelsea.
“We try to adapt as best as we can to their strength and hopefully we can hurt them.”
What couldn’t you believe?
“That I’m sitting on the bench for 90 minutes! The third time on the bench, I think for the first time in my career. I’m very, very disappointed to be fair. I have done so much for this club down the years and especially last season.
“Now I’m sitting on the bench and I don’t know why. It seems like the club has thrown me under the bus. That is how I am feeling. I think it is very clear that someone wanted me to get all of the blame.
“I got a lot of promises in the summer and so far I am on the bench for three games so I can’t say they keep the promise.
I said many times before that I had a good relationship with the manager and all of a sudden, we don’t have any relationship. I don’t know why, but it seems to me, how I see it, that someone doesn’t want me in the club.
“This club, I always support it. My kids will always support it. I love the club so much I will always do. I called my mum yesterday – you guys didn’t know if I would start or not, but I knew. Yesterday I said to them, come to the Brighton game. I don’t know if I am going to play or not but I am going to enjoy it.
“In my head, I’m going to enjoy that game because I don’t know what is going to happen now. I will be in Anfield to say goodbye to the fans and go to the Africa cup. I don’t know what is going to happen when I am there.”
What do you do with the situation now?
“It is not acceptable for me. I don’t know why this is happening to me. I don’t get it. I think if this was somewhere else, every club would protect its player.
“How I see it now is like you throw Mo under the bus because he is the problem in the team now. But I don’t think I am the problem. I have done so much for this club.
“The respect, I want to get. I don’t have to go every day fighting for my position because I earned it. I am not bigger than anyone but I earned my position. It’s football. It is what it is.”
Could it be your last game for Liverpool?
“In football you never know. I don’t accept this situation. I have done so much for this club.
“With respect, I love everyone. I love [Erling] Haaland, I will talk about him. I am the current top goalscorer in the Premier League. He is not yet. He is going to win it hopefully and that is fine for him. I love him and he knows that.
“I am top goalscorer, best player, winning the league in such a style, but I am the one who has to defend himself in front of the media and fans.”
Does this hurt you more?
“Absolutely. After what I have done for the club it really hurts. You can imagine, really. After going from home to the club and you don’t know if you are starting. I know the club too well, I have been here many years. Tomorrow [Jamie] Carragher is going to go for me again and again and that’s fine.”
Saudi still on the table?
“I don’t want to answer this question, because the club is going to take me to a different direction.”
Situation impossible now to solve?
“I cannot say it is impossible, but from what I feel, I have done so much for the club, I love the fans and the club so much, but I don’t know what is going to happen next.”
Doubly frustrating that you didn’t even come on?
“Can you answer that? I have been at this club, scoring more than anyone in this generation, since I came to the Premier League, I don’t think anyone has scored more goals and made more assists than me. In the whole Premier League. If I am somewhere else, everybody would go to the media and defend the players. I am the only one in this situation.
“Can I give an example? Its silly but I am sorry. I remember a while go, Harry Kane was not scoring for 10 games, everyone in the media was like ‘oh, Harry will score for sure, when it comes to Mo everyone is like ‘he needs to be on the bench’. I am sorry Harry!”
When you say about someone wanting you out, who?
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
Sporting director?
“No, no, don’t put the words in my mouth. From the situation I see that’s it.”
Had anyone sort of communicated and explain the situation to you? Have you actually asked for that?
“I did. I did, but I don’t see an explanation.
“Like I knew yesterday that I was not going to play and that’s it, so take it and swallow it and go home.”
Were you told personally you weren’t going to be playing by Arne?
“Yeah, he told me yesterday and had a meeting with him.”
Did you let your feelings be known then, you were disappointed?
“He knows my feeling. He knows my feeling.”
Regret signing that contract?
“Imagine how bad that I have to answer it, honestly.
“That hurts, even the question hurts. This club, signing for this club, I will never regret it.
“I thought I’m going to renew here and end my career here, but this is not according to the plan, so I’m not regretting signing for the club for sure.”
You’re one of the greatest players in Liverpool’s history. Can you believe it might end like this?
“Somehow it will end but the thing in my head is like why it should end this way? Because I am too fit, just five months ago I was just winning every individual award so why should it go this direction?
“I’m sorry everybody in a team is not in his form yet I’m the one has has to defend himself now.”
Now is the next step for you to speak Arne again?
“No, I don’t think so. We spoke a lot.”
Has the relationship broken down?
“Yeah, there’s no relationship between us. It was very good relationship and now all of a sudden there is no relationship.”
Something changed behind the scenes?
“You guys know better than me. I don’t know.”
Do you feel let down from the team mates as well?
“No, no, no, these guys, they know how much I love them. They know how much I support them, even inside before the game, after the game.
“I’m an experienced player, I’ve been in their position. I always support them, I always give them experience. But no, no, the players they’re not connected to the situation at all.
“Even they support me so much so there’s just much love between us as players and respect.”
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