Liverpool have opened negotiations with Mohamed Salah over extending his stay at Anfield
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Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah.
Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah.(Image: Joe Prior/Visionhaus via Getty Images)
The form of Mohamed Salah this season has only served to further underscore his importance to Liverpool. The Egyptian has hit his stride to help the Reds top the table, tied atop of the goalscoring charts with Erling Haaland, both with 13.
The 32-year-old’s contract runs out this summer, along with other vital first-team cogs in Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold. The club have opened negotiations with all three, quite how positive the outcome will be remains to be seen.
There will be heavy interest in all three, and plenty of options for them to consider were they to try their hand as free agents. In Salah’s case, at 32, he had been seen to be outside what a number of Europe’s major clubs who could pay the salary required to snare him were looking for.
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Real Madrid have their eggs in another basket this summer, with Alexander-Arnold reportedly on the radar, while others such as Paris Saint-Germain are in a different space than they were three years ago. Club owners QSI are considering their long-term future in Paris, while the era of Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Neymar Jnr leading the line is over, the focus now on younger stars.
Bayern Munich likely won’t be in the hunt, nor is it likely that Salah would trade Liverpool for another Premier League side. That led to the cash-rich Saudi Arabian Premier League being the most likely destination given the interest last year from Al-Ittihad in Salah.
Barcelona’s financial woes that were exacerbated by the pandemic have seen them taken out of the conversation for such endeavours in recent years. The club currently face the prospect of having to find some extra funds to register Dani Olmo for the new season after their special dispensation to register him last season by using the wages of long-term injured players via La Liga’s financial controls having run its course.
According to various reports in Spanish media in recent months, Salah’s impending situation as a free agent has piqued the interest Barcelona and its president Joan Laporta, keen to see the Catalan club make a splash in the market within the confines of what the club can afford. They need competitive success to enable them to continue on the road to financial recovery.
But the chances of that, given the financial battles, have made that look unlikely. However, Barca, who have pulled on a number of economic ‘levers’ in recent times, including the sale of stadium naming rights and the club’s BarcaVision channel, are eyeing another move that would allow them to invest in the squad in the summer.
Barca are understood to be considering selling the rights to exploit the VIP seating at the Spotify Nou Camp for the next 20 years, a deal that is tipped to net them €200m (£165.5m, based on current exchange rates). That would allow them considerable headroom to make a move in the market, and with Barca fans wanting to see their club make a mark at a time when their rivals, Real Madrid, have landed the likes of Mbappe and Jude Bellingham in recent summers, it could be used to make a move that would both aid competitive success and the club’s marketing activity in other regions.
Liverpool are in the box seat when it comes to Salah’s future, with the Egyptian believed to want to extend his time at Anfield, if only for a further year. But they may have to be aware of some other sharks in the water ready to show their hand who might not have been expected to be around to make a pitch for Salah this summer. That may expedite the process for the Reds in terms of getting a deal done.