Liverpool's Succession Plan for Salah: Ibrahim Mbaye

Liverpool’s Salah succession plan finally has a name – and it’s an 18-year-old from Senegal.

For weeks, the question has hung over Anfield. Mohamed Salah has gone, his era-defining spell on the right wing over, and the new season is racing into view. Less than three weeks to kick-off, no senior right-sided signing through the door, and a depth chart that looks alarmingly thin where Liverpool were once terrifying.

The hole is obvious. The answer has not been.

Jeremie Frimpong can operate high on the flank, but he’s a full-back by trade and, with Conor Bradley injured, needed exactly there. Bradley Barcola has been admired, but he works off the opposite wing. The right side – Salah’s territory, Salah’s legacy – has remained conspicuously untouched.

Now, at last, a direction emerges.

Reports on Tuesday evening linked Liverpool with Ibrahim Mbaye, with suggestions that talks are set to begin soon. Fabrice Hawkins has reported genuine interest from the club. Fabrizio Romano has indicated that the player himself wants the move.

That changes the conversation. This is not a stop-gap. This is succession planning.

Mbaye is only 18. He is not walking straight into Salah’s old role on opening day, and Liverpool know it. What he does represent, though, is exactly the kind of profile the club have so often backed: a young, high-ceiling forward with the raw tools to grow into a superstar.

Liverpool understand the market on the right as well as anyone. At the elite level, it is painfully thin. There are not many players you can realistically project as future world-beaters in that zone of the pitch. Mbaye is one of the few who fit that description, which is why he has long stood out as a preferred option for those tracking emerging talent.

This is why the interest matters. It isn’t just about filling a vacancy in the squad. It’s about finding someone capable, in time, of carrying the weight of replacing an “Egyptian king” who rewrote the modern history of the club.

Liverpool are not signing Salah 2.0. That player doesn’t exist. What they can do is identify the next great right-sided force and give him the environment to grow. In Mbaye, they see a winger with the explosiveness, technique and mentality to one day shoulder that responsibility.

Nothing is done yet. But for the first time since Salah walked away, Liverpool’s long-term vision for the right flank has a face, a name, and a very clear ceiling.

If Ibrahim Mbaye puts it all together, Anfield may just have found a worthy heir.