Brace yourself, you are about to find yourself agreeing with former Liverpool forward El-Hadji Diouf. There is no love lost between the Senegal legend and his old club, to the extent you’d think he’d want the worst for them, but he actually thinks Mohamed Salah should stay at Anfield.
“It is obvious that Liverpool must accept Salah's demands,” he recently told beIN Sports. “If I were Salah, I would stay at Liverpool, he can make more money, he is the best player at the club with (Sadio) Mane, and with him they will win a lot of trophies.
“He's 30 years old, and I'm asking him to play four more years with the Reds. A transfer to Real Madrid will mean he will have to start all over again.”
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A little telling that more money came before winning trophies in Diouf’s list of priorities but fair enough, let’s see where he’s going with this. Whatever his motivations for such a view, we’re all in agreement. Salah should stay. Roll the rest of the clip…
“Salah has to realise that he is African, so they will not treat him like the Europeans, and they will not give him the best contract like the others,' Diouf continued. “The same thing happened to me when I was at Liverpool, they told me not to go to my country to play with my national team.”
Okay, back to normality then. El-Hadji Diouf makes outlandish Liverpool claim, while bringing it back to himself to demonstrate how he was so clearly wronged during his time at Anfield. Nothing new there. It has been 20 years since Gerard Houllier made the ill-advised signing from Lens, bringing in the forward in a £10m deal, and it has been 18 years since the Senegalese last kicked a ball for the club, yet in this instance, time has healed no wounds.
From his verbal spats with the likes of Steven Gerrard to literally spitting in the faces of fans, while Salah’s career is littered with records and trophies, the Senegalese's is a back-catalogue of ugly misdemeanours and transgressions.
He has taunted seriously injured players on the pitch, been caught up in a nightclub brawl, seen transfers collapse due to supporter backlash, been sent of for altercations with managers and opponents, made offensive gestures to fans, skipped training and gone AWOL, been stripped of captaincies and even been banned by his beloved Senegal for failing to attend a disciplinary hearing. He is a law unto himself.
Claiming Liverpool tried to stop him playing for Senegal is unfounded by the way. He did quit international football himself though, in 2007, stating he had been frustrated by organisational problems with the side, before later hitting out at the Senegal Football Federation for banning him in 2011, and then claiming they were scared of him a year later when he failed to earn an international recall.
But he was once voted in the FIFA 100, a list of the 125 greatest living footballers selected by Pele back in 2004, Sadio Mane idolises him and is ‘Mr. Senegal’ for helping fire them to the 2002 World Cup. We’ve heard it all before, El-Hadji.
For Diouf to compare himself to Salah and his Liverpool treatment is just laughable. The Egyptian King is the best player in the world, an English, European and world champion and if he signs a new contract with the Reds, will become the best-paid player in their history. Breaking goalscoring records galore and chasing another Golden Boot, he would be fully deserving of such status too. His nationality doesn’t come into it, he is just an exceptional footballer.
Diouf's record is rather different, as the only number nine in Anfield history to go an entire season without scoring a goal. He also never scored more than 10 goals in a season. Salah has recorded such a return in the space of a month. Do tell us more how you should have been paid more than Gerrard or Michael Owen.
He might regret his Anfield move, insistent that he could and should have signed for Real Madrid instead in 2002, but the La Liga giants hardly came calling when he was discarded after just two seasons. Instead, he had to go on loan to Bolton Wanderers to earn a permanent exit before enjoying brief stints with Sunderland, Blackburn Rovers, Doncaster Rovers, Leeds United and Sabah FA. If Salah does leave Liverpool, it will be a rather different story.
The Reds’ worst ever Premier League signing, Diouf is one of a number of flops to have graced the Anfield turf in the past. But he is the only one to carry any ill-feeling. This isn’t because of his actions with the ball but rather everything else that accompanies him.
He has never shown himself to be anything other than just an objectionable human-being. He might claim otherwise but his career trajectory paints the perfect picture of the player and person he is and was. He was never as good or important as he thinks he is and the sooner he realises that the better.
Yet, as the only person to believe his self-inflated narrative, realistically he never will and he'll never change as he continues to push this myth of a wounded hero, wronged at every turn by the powers that be. So why should we listen to anything he has to say?
In 20 years, Mohamed Salah will be looked back on as one of the greatest ever players to play for Liverpool, with the Egyptian already staking his claim to start being considered in the conversation alongside Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard. In contrast, Diouf is the most-loathed Reds player ever for oh so many different reasons that have been covered repeatedly over the past two decades. He’s barely worth the air-time.
