Mohamed Salah our killer and our heartbeat

Liverpool star Mohamed Salah is the killer but he’s also the heartbeat.

Mo Salah, Mo Salah. Mo Salah, and the sound echoes through the rafters of the Kop. Around the ground song breaks out in honor of Mohamed Salah; the Egyptian King.

Loved worldwide as an ultra modern sports hero for a new millennium, his influence stretches far beyond the confines of a pitch or stadium. Almost diminutive in stature at 5’9”, a tad taller than Lionel Messi; Mohamed Salah is an elvish imp with a football.

Mo is quick, clever, and plays off the shoulders of worthy enough defenders. You’ll see him pivot and peel around them with such bursts of speed and agility with the ball at his feet, or go over the top where he agilely, artfully, brings down the ball without missing a dribble.

There are many a good defender in the league and in Europe who he has just plain buried on their feet. I seem to recall a play such as this with Jan Vertonghen when he was still with Tottenham.

After picking up the ball, Salah held up Vertonghen and rolled past and around him off his left shoulder, to the outside near the touchline, ditching the defender like it was nothing and was able to unmolested into the box and slot home at the far post past the leg of Hugo Lloris.

But I could be describing one of a hundred such goals for Mo in a Liverpool shirt. He is a living legend at Anfield at just 28-years-old.

Goal.com has compiled just some of the remarkable stats and records the gifted Egyptian has put up in three very very short years and it’s well worth a read.

Mohamed Salah works magical with the ball at his feet and he has a precious knack of picking the ball off the laces of midfielders, central defenders, and full-backs unaccustomed to being pickpocketed so thoroughly.

He is master of the right wing in similar fashion to his mate on the left, Sadio Mane. The obvious competition between them to be the top scorer makes and drives them both to push harder to even higher standards of excellence.

But while Mane is a man on a mission in his style. Salah is far more crafty by design. He has a decidedly puckish attitude and nature in his pursuit of excellence. Just as driven, but both arrive by different paths as it were.

He dribbles like Messi, while his speed and quick acceleration make him next to impossible to be caught once he gets going.

Salah has put up phenomenally remarkable, record trending numbers since his arrival from Roma in 2017 – but this is not his first shake at the apple tree in the Premier League. He had a two season stint at Chelsea from 2014-16, where he made a mere 13 appearances and scored two goals.

Liverpool acquired him for cheap, a song in hindsight and the media and football punditry made rather large of the fact he had bombed out at Chelsea, laughing and snickering that Liverpool were being balmy again in the transfer market.

But the club saw something, and the rest, as is said, is history.

There is no one laughing about that particular bit of genius business by Liverpool now. Roma are still steamed and stinging over the public humiliation of letting such a world class talent escape their midst.

Mo has the quiet killer instinct of a cat. Too many defenders have just absolutely lost the plot in trying to keep him in check. A left footed glide across the 18 yard box line strikes fear in the heart of defenses.

He has curled a good many goals in just that fashion, buried in the far top corner.

Salah sits at the right side of the most potent triumvirate in English football and the world at the moment but he is not just a winger. The King slides effortlessly into a central forward false 9 role with mastery and finesse. Again; ala Messi.

I have often thought and felt Mohamed Salah represents everything that Liverpool stand for both in play and ethos. Often seen as outsiders looking in, or the once defeated but never vanquished rising from its own ashes to rise again. This is Liverpool, this is Mo Salah.