Mohamed Salah Open to Saudi Move on His Terms

Mohamed Salah has signalled his willingness to move to Saudi Arabia – but only on his terms – as the fallout from his Liverpool exit explodes into a public row between Dejan Lovren and Jamie Carragher.

The Egyptian’s nine-year stay at Anfield is over. The decision, confirmed weeks ago and coming a year before the end of his £400,000-a-week deal, followed a bruising campaign on and off the pitch for both player and club.

Liverpool staggered to fifth place. The squad had to cope with the tragic death of teammate Diogo Jota. Performances dipped, results collapsed, and Arne Slot ultimately paid with his job. Inside that chaos, Salah’s relationship with the Dutchman frayed badly, and those close to him insist it proved decisive.

Lovren has now gone further. The former Liverpool defender, one of Salah’s closest friends in football, claims the forward would have stayed had Slot been dismissed earlier.

The chapter is closed regardless. Liverpool are already deep into plans for life after Salah, with Yan Diomande identified as their first-choice replacement. The question now is where one of the modern greats of Anfield heads next.

Salah says yes to Saudi – but on three conditions

Saudi Pro League clubs have circled for months. Salah has been, and remains, one of their marquee targets, with proposals that stretch beyond a simple playing contract.

According to strong reports from Saudi outlet Marebpress, Salah has now “granted approval” to a move to the Middle East. That does not mean a deal is done. It means he is open – if three major demands are met.

The report claims Salah already has an offer on the table from a Saudi club, but the financial package falls short of the eye-watering proposal he received before his last Liverpool renewal. That sets the tone. Any Saudi move will need to match not only his current status, but the scale of what was once promised.

Previous reporting has indicated that a Saudi deal would likely rank among the biggest contracts in sporting history, with Salah also expected to take on an ambassadorial role, fronting the league’s push to grow its global profile.

Marebpress outline his conditions clearly.

• First, salary and benefits must reflect his “status and marketing value”. This is not a late-career cash-out at any price; it is a demand to be treated as the face of a project.
• Second, contract length. Salah wants a deal running two or three seasons to secure stability at this stage of his career. No short-term stopgap, no one-year experiment.
• Third, and crucially, he will only join a club with a serious sporting project – one built to compete for major titles, not simply make up the numbers. Trophies still matter. So does the stage on which he chases them.

Until those boxes are ticked, the Saudi move remains a live possibility rather than an inevitability.

Lovren launches fierce defence of Salah

Back on Merseyside, the debate over Salah’s departure has split opinion. Many Liverpool supporters would have preferred to see him stay through to 2027. Others accept that the relationship had run its course.

Lovren is not in the middle. He is furious at the way Salah has been treated and has aimed his anger squarely at Carragher.

Speaking to Winwin, Lovren said: “The way they treated him this season is not harsh. It’s disgusting. Why didn’t they talk about him like this for the past eight or nine years? Tell me… OK, one season, and then he’s the target again. There are so many other issues.”

He believes the criticism has gone beyond analysis and into performance.

“He’s being really heavily criticised. Some pundits do it just to attract attention, maybe because they haven’t succeeded in other areas of their lives, so now they need to perform well… especially Carragher, he says whatever he wants. I always said he should tell him this to his face, say all these things to Mo to his face.

“He’ll never say that. Because I know he never will, because he never said it to me. He’s talked badly about me too, but he never said that to me anyway. You know, he’s just performing on TV and he gets paid for it, so he needs to perform this way.”

It is a direct, personal shot at one of the club’s most prominent former players, and it underlines how raw the emotions around Salah’s exit still are.

‘It’s just the manager’ – Lovren points at Slot

Lovren does not blame Liverpool’s hierarchy for Salah’s decision to go. He blames one man.

“I don’t think it’s the management (that pushed Salah to leave). I think it’s just one person, and I think it’s just the manager. They didn’t have a good relationship. Let’s put it simply,” he said.

With Jürgen Klopp, Lovren paints a very different picture.

“With Klopp, he had a really good relationship. It wasn’t always perfect, but they knew each other very well, let’s say that too, and they trusted each other, they liked each other, and Mo gave everything on the pitch for Klopp, and Klopp gave him that trust. But (with Slot) it was the opposite. It’s that simple, and everyone knows it because when you look at the previous eight or nine seasons, he did really well.”

In Lovren’s eyes, this was not the natural decline of a great player. It was a breakdown in trust with the man on the touchline.

He also argues that Salah stood too alone when the pressure came.

“There are other players who should also take responsibility and say, ‘yes, this is my fault’, but you know, some players never came forward,” Lovren added.

“There was mismanagement; internally, they didn’t handle it well. They didn’t handle it well. Even if you have some problems, you have to talk about it in the dressing room, and like I said, Mo never felt that support. He was always the front-page headline, ‘Ah, it’s Mohamed Salah, don’t be surprised.’ I mean… it’s a deep-seated issue.”

A superstar in limbo

So Liverpool move on, reshaping their attack and their identity without the man who defined so much of their modern era. Salah, meanwhile, stands at a crossroads.

Saudi Arabia is ready. The money, the stage, the promise of a central role in a national project – it is all there, if his three demands are met.

What comes next will not just reshape his own legacy. It will say plenty about where the balance of power in the modern game truly lies.