Mohamed Salah’s first game after his new contract was confirmed was the season in miniature. It started exceptionally well. He bullied West Ham’s 19-year old wing back Oliver Scarles. He set up the opening goal for Luis Diaz with a beautifully-weighted outside-of-the-foot pass. In doing so he set a new record of 45 goal contributions in a 38-game Premier League season – with six matches still to play.
After that: not so much. Salah had 43 touches in the first half, only five in the second. When he was eventually subbed off in the 85th minute, with Arne Slot looking to shut up shop at 1-0, he hadn’t been on the ball in 10 minutes.
Salah looked annoyed, as he always does on the rare occasions he is substituted, but he had no legitimate grounds for complaint. He will have to become more accepting of getting subbed off if the two additional seasons he has signed up for are to be as productive as he, and Liverpool, hope they will be.
Salah, who turns 33 in June, has already played nearly 4,400 minutes of football this season. The only Liverpool player who has played more football is Virgil van Dijk, with more than 4,800 minutes for club and country in 24-25, including every minute of the Premier League campaign.
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Van Dijk turns 34 in July, and the level of performance he has delivered this season is a colossal achievement for a player whose top-level career was in jeopardy after Jordan Pickford wrecked his knee in the autumn of 2020. He and Salah have been the most important players in the team, just as they were the last time Liverpool won the title five years ago.
But if Liverpool want to build on what now looks certain to be a title-winning campaign, rather than regressing like they did the last time, they need to find players who can share the load.
Liverpool always had the advantage in contract negotiations with Salah and Van Dijk because not many clubs are willing to risk €20-million-a-year salaries on players approaching their mid-30s. So why are Liverpool suddenly that kind of club? Because for them there’s no “adaptation risk” – these two players have been the pillars of their team for years. Because they could not afford to lose so much experience and identity in the same summer that a third key player, Trent Alexander-Arnold, leaves for Real Madrid.
Van Dijk scored the winning goal for Liverpool three minutes after Andy Robertson had venomously screamed at him for a blunder that led to Robertson equalising for West Ham with an own goal. Underlying Robertson’s anger in that moment might have been a general sense of frustration at the unfairness of life. Robertson is 2½ years younger than Van Dijk. His contract expires next year but it’s unlikely that next season will see a similar drama over whether he renews. Every footballer gets too old eventually, but it doesn’t happen to them all at the same rate.
Look at Kevin De Bruyne, who is just 10 days older than Van Dijk. Manchester City have decided to let him go when his contract expires in the summer. Speaking after he inspired City’s 5-2 comeback against Crystal Palace on Saturday, De Bruyne made it clear that he would have stayed another season if City had wanted him to, and also that he would be open to playing for another Premier League club if he received an interesting offer.
De Bruyne is not the player he was but he remains a hell of a player. Despite his reduced playing time this season he is, as usual, the top player in the league in terms of chances created per 90 minutes. How angry is he at being jettisoned by Guardiola? Is he as angry as the 36-year old Johan Cruyff was back in 1983 when Ajax decided he wasn’t worth another contract? Cruyff promptly joined Feyenoord and won the League and Cup double plus the Dutch player of the year award.
Some other Premier League club should certainly try to sign De Bruyne. But Liverpool, the club he supported as a kid in Belgium, should not be that club. Not if they are already planning to have a 33-year-old Salah as the main man in their attack.
We have seen a trend in football where attacking players continue to excel at ages when their equivalents of past generations were already running pubs. We saw Messi inspiring Argentina to the World Cup at 35, Karim Benzema winning the Ballon d’Or at 35, Cristiano Ronaldo scoring more goals after his 30th birthday than before it, Luka Modric pushing 40 and still running games in the Champions League. The same pattern is seen in many other sports – Tom Brady, Novak Djokovic, Alex Ovechkin – the greats are lasting longer than they used to.
No doubt Barcelona had guys like Brady and Djokovic in mind when they decided it was a good idea to pay Bayern €50 million for Robert Lewandowski in 2022, a few weeks before he turned 34. A deal that was much-mocked at the time has actually turned out rather well: Lewandowski recently scored his 40th goal of this season, and his next goal for Barcelona will be his 100th in less than three seasons. Barcelona have their best chance of winning the Champions League in a decade.
Lewandowski continues to thrive because Barcelona have surrounded him with the pace and energy of Raphinha and Lamine Yamal. Likewise, Messi looked much more effective playing for Argentina alongside energetic young players like Julian Alvarez and Alexis MacAllister than he had with the ageing Luis Suarez towards the end of Suarez’s time at Barcelona.
Liverpool can expect another couple of big seasons from Salah, but only if they find young team-mates with the speed to complement his knowhow. Football increasingly is a country for old men, but you won’t get away with a whole team of them.
