Image Credits: Imago Images
When Liverpool splashed out £40 million to bring Milos Kerkez to Anfield from Bournemouth in the summer of 2025, few could have predicted just how quickly the Hungarian left-back would settle into life on Merseyside – and fewer still would have guessed that one of his closest allies in the dressing room would turn out to be club legend Mohamed Salah.
Kerkez quickly fell into the social orbit of Salah and fellow countryman Dominik Szoboszlai, the trio becoming a tight-knit group at Liverpool’s AXA Training Centre in Kirkby.
And now speaking to ESPN’s Beth Lindop, Kerkez explained that his relationship with Salah came naturally as he “connects well with Balkan guys”:
“When Mo came to Liverpool, I was living in Austria [while in the academy at Rapid Vienna],” Kerkez said.
“I was really young and it was around that time I started to watch Liverpool a lot. Now I’m here. He always says he connects well with the Balkan guys.”
“We are close, me, him and Dom. He accepted me really well – like everyone did, but he took me more under his wing. He helped me out in many ways, also just hanging out and doing stuff together. I’m very thankful for that. It’s going to be one month more and for sure I’m going to miss him a lot.”
“He has so much experience, but what really puts Salah away from everyone else is how professional he is. He’s unbelievable. I don’t think I’ve seen that in any other player, doing all the gym stuff, eating healthy, how focused he is to make sure he is doing everything to perform well on the pitch. That is really unbelievable. It’s what I have tried to learn from him this year.”
In February, Kerkez posted on Instagram during a trip to London with the pair, even giving fans a glimpse of Salah’s trophy cabinet — a collection that includes two Premier League titles, a Champions League, an FA Cup and much more:
“I asked Mo if he’d ever posted the picture on social media so everyone could see it,” Kerkez said. “He told me no so I said: ‘I’m going to take a picture of this and post it later’. We went to London together and I decided to post it while we were there. It’s pretty nice, huh?
“It’s more tough [for me] to have the individual trophies that he has because I’m a full back. He has scored a lot of goals. But when you see all the team trophies that he’s won, of course you look at that as a young player and just think: ‘Wow’. You just want to train harder, play harder, win things with the team.”
Salah is now entering into his last month as a Liverpool player. It remains to be seen if the Egyptian will recover from his hamstring worry in time to play in a Liverpool shirt once more.