On June 30, 2023 Mohamed Salah’s Liverpool contract will come to an end. While the Egyptian insisted last season that he will remain with the Reds for the upcoming season, his future beyond that is rather less certain.
He wants Liverpool and Liverpool want him but, so far, the two parties have been unable to reach a breakthrough in negotiations. While the Reds won’t break their wage structure to retain the Egypt international, they are still willing to make him the best-paid player in the club’s history, yet the forward’s agent previously insisted that the 30-year-old had no intention of signing the offer put to him back in December.
Free to talk to overseas clubs over a Bosman transfer from January, Liverpool know they will have to be nimble if they are to agree a new contract with Salah now. Especially after his representation suggested he would be willing to move to a rival Premier League club if the Reds don’t meet his demands.
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Yet all is not lost, despite Sadio Mane ’s £35m move to Bayern Munich the latest example of Liverpool allowing senior stars to depart after seemingly failing to agree fresh terms. After all, while the Reds have a clear strategy and vision in place to ensure continued success by refreshing their squad, their desire to keep Salah is an obvious exception when it comes to retaining the services of long-serving but ageing stars.
For the majority of last season, Salah was considered the best player in the world with his performances in the first half of the campaign at least drawing comparisons to a remarkable year from one former Red who Liverpool had fought desperately to retain. Luis Suarez.
Having failed to force though a move to Arsenal in the summer of 2013, when the Gunners infamously bid £40m and £1 for the Uruguayan in a bid to activate a release clause, the striker was in the form of his life during the 2013/14 season as Brendan Rodgers’ side came within a whisker of winning a maiden Premier League title. Yet having been talked into staying at Anfield the previous summer, there was still a resignation that Suarez would probably depart come 2014.
So imagine the surprise when, having scored 17 goals from just 11 Premier League appearances that season, Christmas came early at Anfield as Suarez signed a new four-and-a-half-year contract in December 2013. Inevitably, he celebrated his new deal with a brace the following day as he captained the Reds to a 3-1 victory over Cardiff City to move them top of the Premier League.
Suarez’s new terms saw him leapfrog captain Steven Gerrard as the club’s highest earner, with him earning roughly £160k a week, up from £120k a week, until the end of the season, before being paid £200k a week over the final four years of his contract until 2018.
The striker would ultimately never stay long enough to pocket those improved terms as he moved to Barcelona in the summer of 2014, but with FSG offering such a deal at the time to retain the striker, who would have been left with two years on his contract otherwise, it could offer a solution to their current impasse with Salah. While they might not want to commit to paying the same salary each season, due to the ramifications it could have on their wage bill, a staggered improvement could grant Salah the terms he wants in line with the next round of negotiations for his high-earning team-mates.
Or perhaps a set wage which rises or falls each season depending on individual and team performance as the Reds weigh up the pros and cons of offering such a high-paying commitment to a player on the wrong side of 30. Whether that is actually agreeable, only those around both sides of the negotiating table will be able to answer, but the deal Suarez signed back in 2013 shows FSG aren’t against thinking outside of the box to retain the services of their star players.
Moreover, the fact that Gerrard too had been said to earning £120k a week at that time, it perhaps offers a hint as to how much FSG would be willing to offer above their current highest earner’s wage (reportedly Virgil van Dijk on £220k a week) to keep Salah.
Yet the deal Suarez signed back in 2013 does prompt one concern when it comes to the current contracts said to be on offer at Anfield. The club committed to making the striker their highest earner on £200k a week, should he stay put, in December 2013. Nearly nine years on and that same wage is what Salah is said to be on now.
Given Liverpool’s success over the past decade, re-establishing themselves as Champions League regulars before being crowned champions of England, Europe and the world, their overall wage bill will understandably be higher than what they were paying in 2013/14, with the gap between highest earners and the rest of the squad far greater than what we see when looking around Klopp’s mentality monsters today.
But should their highest earners not have moved with the times too? When Cristiano Ronaldo is said to be the Premier League's highest earner on over £500k a week, Kevin De Bruyne pockets £400k a week and Erling Haaland has come into the league on £375k a week, joining David De Gea and Jadon Sancho in breaking the £350k mark, Salah is quite right to expect more.
The Reds have been rivalling and even bettering their domestic rivals on the pitch, while paying them less behind the scenes. No wonder it has ultimately so far been so tough for club and player to find a compromise.
Liverpool have been a victim of their own success and paid the rest of their squad accordingly. As a result, they are left debating just how important the Egyptian King is to their efforts and how much more they are willing to pay him to keep him around, as they did with Suarez all those years ago.
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