A prodigy from rural Egypt, Mohamed Salah is now to his country what Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are to Argentina and Portugal. Since signing with Liverpool in 2017, he has helped restore the Reds to their former glories and, in return, become the highest-paid player in the club’s history. The £55m three-year extension in 2022 was the toughest deal that Salah’s lawyer, Ramy Abbas, ever brokered. Still without a contract for next summer and with rumours of a move to the lucrative Saudi Pro League resurfacing, the prolific scorer’s future in Merseyside is back in the spotlight. Here, a recently published biography explains the obsessive dedication to self-improvement that makes the Egyptian King, even at the age of 32, a force to be reckoned with - on or off the pitch.
In pre-season training at Liverpool, manager Jürgen Klopp was an omnipresent force, circling the pitches, and swooping on anyone who did not follow orders. His control was absolute. During these camps, usually in France or Austria, he would push them to their limits. If Liverpool were to be as successful as Klopp wanted them to be, this meant being both physically and mentally prepared for seasons that were long.
While some staff questioned the wisdom of pushing the players so hard, they could see a benefit. ‘Mentally, it made them stronger,’ admitted one cynic.
Salah wanted more. He seemed to crave it. Three training sessions were often preceded and followed by gym work. It was not uncommon for him to order room service past midnight, as he refuelled his body for the next morning. His standard order was porridge and walnuts with honey and raisins.
Reports showed staff that he had a well-balanced structure. There was soft tissue work after matches but he devoted a lot of time to the gym, and this reduced his needs. In subsequent years, he would sometimes earn a yellow card by throwing his shirt into the air after scoring a goal. Comments would follow about his six pack. Yet Salah did not develop this necessarily to impress. He realised the connection between core and performance.
Liverpool’s training ground until 2020 was fifty-minutes from Salah’s home in Cheshire, where several teammates also lived. While other early starters would play pool, Salah was nearly always working to maximise his abdominal strength. This would allow him to turn faster and decelerate quicker. He could jump higher, land safely and set off on a run, twisting and turning. Quickly, he became more agile. ‘His commitment to himself was unwavering and he became unstoppable,’ said one member of the fitness team.
Salah had been a gym-user as a teenager on the fringes of the Al-Mokawloon team in Egypt. Though he was fast, he was sometimes easily knocked off the ball. In the first team, Salah got angry whenever that happened. According to a teammate, Cristiano Ronaldo wasn’t Salah’s favourite player but he looked at his body and realised he had to transform himself if he was going to succeed outside Egypt.
It was not until he joined Chelsea that he really began to understand the importance of weight training. The other players in the dressing room all seemed to be bigger. Speed would only get him so far. He had to be able to survive. Being out of the team also brought a sense of despondency about his career. The gym exercise made him feel alive. ‘I used to go every day because I knew I would not play,’ he told GQ magazine in 2022.
Throughout his time at Liverpool, his definition and tone were aided by Pilates, which controlled his movements in a slower fashion, stimulating endurance, increased core strength, stability and posture alignment.
Salah’s dedication, even by the standards of any supremely fit Premier League footballer, was ‘extreme’ and his faith would not get in the way of his desire to ‘create a machine’ out of his body. During Ramadan, some workouts and refuelling at home would begin at 2.40am. His nutritionist would tell him that he did not have any body fat and he could eat whatever he wanted but he managed his consumption carefully.
While his house was filled with fitness and medical equipment, he also practised meditation and yoga, which introduced a realm of alternative thought. After a thunderous goal in front of the Kop secured a late victory against his old club Chelsea in 2019, he celebrated with a tree pose.
Salah would continue to begin days sitting on the side of his bed, with fifteen minutes of the visualisation training that had worked so well for him in Rome after reading about how it had improved the performances of Olympic Gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps. Salah woke up every morning imagining himself about to score.
With time, he would find that all of this made him calmer in front of goal – if it seemed to him that he’d been in a certain situation before, it was because he’d pictured himself there.
His interest in self-improvement was an ‘obsession’ according to a Liverpool teammate, who would often see him on away trips retreat into his hotel room with a self-help book. Salah would also use scripture as a reminder to anyone who doubted that he was a proud Egyptian.
Re-signing Salah in 2022 ended up costing Liverpool nearly £55 million. His three-year contract was worth £350,000 per week basic. If he did well, that figure would be pushed towards £400,000. It easily made him the highest-paid player in the club’s history.
Klopp was relieved the saga was over. ‘It’s the best decision for us and best decision for him,’ he said. ‘He belongs with us.’ Klopp understood that Salah was one of the best players in the world and this meant negotiations were always going to be far from straightforward. ‘I have no doubt Mo’s best years are still to come,’ he added. ‘And that’s saying something, because the first five seasons here have been the stuff of legend.’
As Liverpool toured the US this year ahead of the start of another campaign that will involve the Champions League again, Salah would spend his evenings bunkered in his hotel room re-watching his performances in the friendly matches. His quest for self-improvement is not over.
This is an edited extract from Chasing Salah: The Biography by Simon Hughes, out now (Constable, £16.99 Trade Paperback).
