Arne Slot Refuses Farewell Script for Mohamed Salah at Anfield
Arne Slot is refusing to offer Anfield a farewell script for Mohamed Salah.
On Sunday, Liverpool need a single point against Brentford to rubber-stamp a return to the Champions League. It could also be the last time Salah pulls on the red shirt at Anfield after nine years that reshaped the club’s modern history. Slot is keeping that possibility – and his team sheet – firmly under lock and key.
“I never say anything about team selection,” he said when pressed on whether Salah would feature in what may be his Liverpool goodbye.
The question has taken on an edge. Last weekend, Salah used social media to call for Liverpool to change their style of play, a post widely read as a swipe at Slot’s football. It landed in a week when the club’s season, and Salah’s future, already felt precariously balanced.
This is not the first flashpoint. Earlier in the campaign, the 33-year-old was left out of a Champions League trip to Inter Milan after saying in an interview that his relationship with Slot had broken down. That omission felt seismic then; his latest comments have only deepened the sense of a partnership running on fumes.
Slot, though, refused to be drawn into a public feud.
“I don’t think it is that important what I feel about it,” he said of Salah’s post. “What is important is that we qualify for the Champions League on Sunday and I prepare Mo and the whole team in the best possible way for the game.”
The frustration is still there. Slot admitted he was “very disappointed” after the defeat to Villa, a result that delayed qualification and turned the Brentford game into a high‑stakes finale.
“Now there’s one game to go which is a vital one for us as a club,” he said. That is the lens through which he wants everything – even Salah’s unrest – to be viewed.
For all the tension, Slot insisted their core aim is shared.
“We both want what’s best for the club, we both want the club to be successful and that’s the main aim,” he said. The challenge, as he sees it, lies in reshaping a side that has stalled.
“I have to find a way to evolve this team now and definitely in the summer and in the upcoming season to be successful again, and to play a brand of football that I like. And if I like it then the fans will like it as well because I haven’t liked a lot of the way we played this season.”
That admission was striking. A manager publicly saying he has not enjoyed much of his own team’s football this year is a sharp line in any era, never mind at a club that only last season lifted the league title.
Slot then nudged the conversation toward the future, with or without his star forward.
“We try to evolve the team in a way that we can compete but definitely also play the brand of football, the style of football the fans, I, and hopefully Mo if he’s somewhere else at that moment in time will like as well.”
The phrase hung there. “Somewhere else.” Slot did not confirm Salah’s departure, but the possibility now feels openly acknowledged rather than whispered.
When it was put to him that Salah’s comments about Liverpool needing to recover their identity might undermine his authority, Slot bristled.
“You are doing a lot of assumptions. First of all you say that he wants to play that style and then say it is not my style,” he replied.
He pointed back to last season as his counter-argument.
“I think Mo was really happy with the style we played last year as it lead to us winning the league. Football has changed, football has evolved, but we both want what is best for Liverpool and that is for us to compete for trophies, which we haven’t done this season and which we did last season.
“He and the team – and I was included in that – brought the league title back after five years and we would like to challenge for that again next season and continue to evolve the team. That is my take on it.”
The modern game does not leave disputes in the dressing room for long. Salah’s post quickly gathered likes and comments from team-mates, a public show of interaction that inevitably raised questions about the dressing-room mood.
Slot, 45, shrugged at the social-media storm.
“Social media came when I was a little bit older, so as people know I’m not really involved. I don’t really know what it exactly means if you ‘like’ a post,” he said.
His focus, he insisted, stays on the grass.
“What I know, and that is my world, is to see how they train and I have not seen anything different compared to the rest of the season.”
So Liverpool walk into Sunday with a manager who wants to reinvent the team, a superstar who has publicly challenged the style of play, and a club that must avoid one more stumble to reclaim its place among Europe’s elite.
Whether Salah plays, whether he waves goodbye, whether this uneasy truce holds for 90 more minutes – all of that will play out under Anfield’s lights.
What cannot wait is the answer to a blunt question: is this the end of an era, or the last painful step before Slot’s Liverpool finally starts to look like his own?
