Mo Salah

[BobTheCharmer]

Will face Sadio and Senegal in the semi final.

Fingers crossed for a Sadio winner.

[Mark79]

Sadio is already an Afcon champion.

Fingers crossed Mo wins it.

[Cerbie]

Sadio is already an Afcon champion.

Fingers crossed Mo wins it.

Yeah, better for us if Mo wins it. His value to Saudi would be bumped up.

[Mark79]

Yeah, better for us if Mo wins it. His value to Saudi would be bumped up.

Well that too. But I just want it for him really.

[Buzzo]

Straight off to Saudi, hopefully.

We need players more than money. Can’t see anything happening until the summer.

[Buzzo]

Sadio is already an Afcon champion.

Fingers crossed Mo wins it.

[Exiled_red]

We need players more than money. Can’t see anything happening until the summer.

[BobTheCharmer]

Sadio is already an Afcon champion.

Fingers crossed Mo wins it.

I want him to win it again.

[Mark79]

I want him to win it again.

I want them both to have won it. So Mo’s turn.

[BootRoom]

Yeah, better for us if Mo wins it. His value to Saudi would be bumped up.

Salah holding aloft the AFCON cup should add a zero or two to the Saudi cheque.

[Sus]

Not sure if this sits in the Salah thread or Mane's, but an interesting article on their rivalry, ahead of the Senegal v Egypt semi-final later today

Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane: The respect, the rivalry, the rifts
Simon Hughes
Jan. 14, 2026 5:14 am GMT

Even now, nearly six and a half years later, the footage of Sadio Mane’s patience snapping with Mohamed Salah in the very public setting of a Premier League stadium seems deliciously off-script. In an era when the sport seldom allows anyone to peek behind the curtain, players and clubs attempt to control much of what we see, defining how they are viewed.

On this occasion, at the beginning of a campaign that would end with Liverpool being crowned champions for the first time in 30 years, a veneer was scratched. The reality of at least one relationship in an elite environment was partially exposed, as Mane raged at Salah and his substitution moments after his team-mate did not supply him for what surely would have been a fourth goal in an otherwise smooth 3-0 victory for Liverpool at Burnley.

A competitive friction is relatively easy to explain: the pair were born in the same year, they were raised rurally and overcame similar obstacles to reach the professional ranks; they practise the same faith and come from the same continent, inheriting enormous interest and pressure, to play for the same club where their responsibilities were connected. Internationally, they were competing to win the same trophy and individually, they both aspired to be recognised as the best in the world.

Detailing how the tension manifested at Liverpool is less straightforward because, for five seasons, the team largely did well, winning almost everything there was to win. Generally, the players who shared a dressing room with Salah and Mane formed their impressions around the results. They tend to think the competition was an amusing dynamic that helped drive Liverpool on to great things. It was slightly different for the staff, who listened more to gripes and, in the paranoia of a dressing room, believed their futures could be determined by whichever force they were connected to.

While Salah just about remains at Liverpool, Mane left for Bayern Munich in 2022, less than five months after returning to Merseyside as an Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) winner. That penalty-shootout victory for Senegal in Cameroon came at the expense of Salah’s Egypt. Following a party in Dakar, other Senegalese players were greeted in Europe with celebrations organised by their clubs but Liverpool, competing for a quadruple at the time, had different priorities and barely marked an achievement Mane described as the greatest of his career, eclipsing the domestic title he won with Liverpool, as well as the Champions League before that.

Mane did not make a fuss because he knew what was at stake at Anfield and did not want to be accused of being self-absorbed. Yet, quietly, staff realised the lack of recognition was received as a snub and a sign that the club cared more about Salah’s feelings than the history-making success of another one of its key players — Senegal had never previously won AFCON.

Mane, who now plays for Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia, and Salah have since acknowledged a rivalry existed between them before awkwardly retreating to the sort of platitudes footballers often offer about one another. Check out Mane’s recent interview with Rio Ferdinand as a sample.

On Wednesday, they meet again, this time in Tangier, Morocco. With the winner progressing to the final of the 2025 edition of AFCON, the narrative will be defined by a relationship born on Merseyside.

Staff can remember Salah and Mane relaxing beside one another on the massage tables of the club’s old training ground, Melwood, in the summer of 2017. The context around the very formation of their loose partnership in Liverpool’s attack, however, inspired potential friction.

When he joined Liverpool from Southampton a year earlier, the £36million ($48m) deal for Mane broke two significant records: he became the most expensive Senegalese player of all time, and his transfer fee was the highest paid by any Premier League club for an African footballer.

Salah’s arrival at Liverpool 12 months later for a marginally bigger fee meant Mane’s status changed in other ways, as he moved from the right of Liverpool’s attack to the left despite a brilliant debut campaign during which he fired the team back into the Champions League.
Once there, Salah’s 44 goals heaved Liverpool to even higher levels, and as he kept scoring (helping take Liverpool all the way to the final), he inherited the responsibilities that Mane thought should be his, such as penalty kicks.

By the summer of 2018, Salah had emerged as the star in Liverpool’s dressing room but he did not get everything his own way. During the 2017-18 campaign, for example, he had developed a close bond with a physio, Ruben Pons, but his contract was terminated at the end of a summer in which the Spaniard travelled to the World Cup in Russia to help oversee Salah’s recovery from a shoulder injury.

Pons’ replacement was another Spaniard, Jose Luis Rodriguez, who spoke Arabic after a decade working in Qatar. To the players and staff, at least, it felt like an appointment designed to please Salah, though neither he nor anyone else was explicitly told Rodriguez’s hire was for him.

The dynamic left Rodriguez in a curious position because he knew Pons’ closeness to Salah had not saved his job and he was trying to fit in at a club where he barely knew anyone. To others, it seemed as though Rodriguez wanted Salah to create interest in working closer with him but just as that relationship was taking shape, Mane gravitated towards the new physio, hooking him away from Salah.

With time, it would become clearer that Rodriguez’s personality was closer to Salah’s than Mane’s but Salah ended up spending more time with Chris Rohrbeck, another physio from Germany, partly because of their shared interest in basketball.

It might not have worked out quite as planned but the dynamics benefited Liverpool because Rohrbeck was a workaholic who offered Salah the specialised treatment he craved, while Mane gave Rodriguez a purpose and their connection inspired a new confidence between the player and a medical department which had sometimes previously found it difficult to get through to Mane.

It was very clear to anyone paying attention that Salah and Mane valued each other as team-mates, rated each other as footballers, but also saw each other as rivals. They were rarely open about their feelings but quiet conversations revealed that one was usually interested in what the other was receiving or doing, particularly when it came to nutrition and conditioning.

Mane was a brooding presence on the pitch but he could be fun off it. Salah seemed more secure about himself but took strength from those who felt the same way about his place in the hierarchy. He was also aware that he held a preferential position, ahead of Mane, and if he was curious about his team-mate’s interest in him, he was not obviously stressed by it.

Roberto Firmino, the third element in Liverpool’s devastating attack, suggested in his autobiography that “Mane left Liverpool precisely because he didn’t feel as valued as Salah within the club. He felt he was being treated as less important.”

The Brazilian described Mane as “more intense in both the good and the bad moments”. Yet Firmino would build a closer relationship with Mane than Salah, adding: “I was always talking to him (Mane), giving advice, trying to calm him down. I would tell him to find peace, play for the team, and stay relaxed.”

Firmino saw a more explosive footballer and personality in Mane. Salah was “more of a dribbler and an opportunist”. Positioned in the middle, both on the football pitch and in an emotional sense, Firmino witnessed “accusing glances” whenever a pass didn’t connect between the pair.

Liverpool’s manager Jurgen Klopp decided to address what he framed as a wider issue with the team when he pressed home the idea that a team-mate in a better position should always be serviced. According to Firmino, this was a “clear hint” to Salah.

Klopp then called both players into a meeting after what happened at Turf Moor in 2019, telling them simply that whatever was brewing between them had to stop.

Over the month that followed, however, they did not exactly seek each other out, because five games later (across nine games overall), Salah had not created a single goalscoring chance for Mane, having played just 12 passes to him. Mane, meanwhile, had passed just 14 times to Salah almost a quarter of the way through the season (compared to records of 112 passes from Salah to Mane the year before, and 105 from Mane to Salah).

Liverpool kept winning and the issue faded from public view. Meanwhile, with neither player embedded in any of the squad’s social groups, any sense of frustration did not influence other parts of the dressing room.

Salah could annoy others on the pitch with his single-mindedness but Liverpool’s players tended to understand that he was the figure in the team opponents really feared when he followed his instincts. More was expected of Mane within the team structure because of his involvement in Liverpool’s press, leading to more opportunities for Mane to earn criticism from team-mates and coaches.

Just before half-time of a different game during Liverpool’s title season, Mane was censured by a team-mate for supposedly not releasing the ball quickly enough and he reacted indignantly in the dressing room. Earlier, Mane had felt Salah had done the same to him but no one said anything. Klopp, now fully aware of the sensitivities, allowed Mane to unload before calming the situation. Liverpool were halfway towards another victory in which both players ultimately scored. Letting the mood slide between them seemed to be working.

Mane was voted as the third-best player in Africa in 2016 before finishing second in 2017 and 2018, when only Salah came ahead of him. Mane would then take the crown in successive years, taking into account a hiatus for the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was not lost on Mane that when he finished second in 2018, he accompanied Salah to the ceremony in Dakar but Salah did not reciprocate the gesture when Mane took the same prize on his turf in Cairo a year later.

Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane at the awards ceremony in Accra, Ghana in 2018Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images
Salah had told staff at Liverpool that he decided not to attend because of a dispute with organisers of the event, though this information only found its way indirectly to Mane, who could afford to laugh about the matter because on this occasion he was in front.
Mane would have the edge in 2022 as well, when his penalties in shootouts across successive months secured Senegal their first AFCON title before World Cup qualification was sealed, with Egypt going out.

His conversion in the first of those key ties meant Salah did not have the chance to take his kick, leading to a conversation in Egypt that asked questions of why he did not assume responsibility earlier. Salah was, perhaps, unfairly accused of wanting to take the glory for himself when, really, he was banking on his team-mates doing a job and him taking on more pressure. That the same thing had entered Mane’s thoughts is a reminder that both players are not far away from each other in how they really think.

[BobTheCharmer]

Mane had 40 touches to salahs 15 in first half. Seems the form is the same as for us with regard to mo.

Mane hits the winner.

[Mark79]

Salah scored 4 goals.

Salah’s goal conversion rate for the tournament was a whopping 40%. When Egypt were able to get him on the ball in the box, he delivered.

Mane, so far is 2 goals from a piddling 7% conversion. He has weighed in with 3 assists though.

Hope Mane wins his second Afcon now.

[SB]

This playoff match for 3rd & 4th place at the AFCON is such a joke. Who gives a toss who comes 3rd, who remembers who? I read the tournament is going to be played every 4 years from 2028 so that’s a good thing considering when it’s played during the season.

[Mark79]

This playoff match for 3rd & 4th place at the AFCON is such a joke. Who gives a toss who comes 3rd, who remembers who? I read the tournament is going to be played every 4 years from 2028 so that’s a good thing considering when it’s played during the season.

I’d completely missed that news. About time, it should have switched to a 4 year cycle a long time ago.

Of course it had to happen only after our Salah/Mane era