Mohamed Salah delivered a performance that instantly reminded Turkish football exactly why his arrival generated such excitement, scoring a stunning hat-trick as Trabzonspor demolished league leaders Galatasaray in the standout fixture of the seventh round of the Süper Lig on Saturday evening.
The Egyptian needed just four minutes to make his mark.
Picking up the ball from a counter-attack deep inside his own half, Salah drove forward at pace, went one-on-one with Galatasaray goalkeeper Ugurcan Cakir, and finished coolly to give Trabzonspor an early lead in front of their home supporters.
It was a goal built entirely on the explosive pace and composure in front of goal that defined his nine seasons at Liverpool.
He was not finished contributing before the interval.
Six minutes before half-time, Salah turned provider, setting up Noah Saveljic for what became Trabzonspor’s second of the afternoon.
Then, in the 44th minute, he was back among the goals himself, finishing off a well-worked pass from Francolino to make it 3-0 and send Trabzonspor into the break with the game already effectively decided.
The Egyptian completed his hat-trick in the 80th minute with a near carbon copy of his opener, bursting away from inside his own half before finishing clinically once again.
It capped an afternoon of complete individual dominance against a Galatasaray side that arrived in Trabzon at the top of the table.
The result takes Salah’s Süper Lig tally to seven goals in his opening months in Turkish football, following previous strikes against Amed Sportif and Genclerbirligi, as well as a brace against Istanbul Basaksehir earlier in the campaign.
It is a return that underlines just how seamlessly he has adapted to life away from the Premier League after nine remarkable seasons at Anfield, where he finished as the club’s third highest scorer of all time with 257 goals.
The victory also carried significant context beyond Salah’s individual brilliance.
Trabzonspor had been chasing their first win under new German head coach Thomas Reis, whose early tenure had yet to produce the results supporters were hoping for.
A 3-0 demolition of the league’s form side represented precisely the statement performance Reis needed to settle any early doubts about his appointment.
For Galatasaray, the defeat ends their perfect start to the season and hands them their first loss of the campaign, denying them the chance to extend their outright lead at the top of the table.
Coming against a Salah performance of this magnitude, it will sting considerably more.
For Salah himself, the hat-trick serves as emphatic confirmation that his decision to move to Turkey, turning down interest from the Saudi Pro League and MLS in the process, has not diminished his output in the slightest.
Nine matches into his Trabzonspor career, the numbers suggest he remains every bit the predator that terrorised Premier League defences for nearly a decade.
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