The most striking scenes that Liverpool FC produced for the Premier League opener at Chelsea on Sunday all had to do with Mohamed Salah: The 31-year-old winger hit the crossbar, prepared the opening goal by Luis Diaz in an excellent way and scored a nice one Work gate – and was then substituted early, which he did not like at all.
When Jürgen Klopp ordered him off the field in the 77th minute, Salah ran off the field grumpily, threw parts of his hand bandage onto the lawn, marched past his coach to the reserve bench and sat down, annoyed. It’s clear that Klopp had to comment on the incident again after the 1-1 draw – that’s how it had been before the change.
“No, I haven’t spoken to him yet. I don’t think you’ve ever seen Mo leave the field happy. I can’t remember it. It’s okay,” Klopp said at the press conference, claiming calmly: No problem”.
Salah: Record missed, streak broken
Salah may also have been pissed off because being substituted meant he had no chance of setting a new Premier League record this Sunday: like only Alan Shearer, Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney, the Egyptian has already scored eight goals on the first matchday , no one has managed nine yet. Salah failed to score against Chelsea for the first time since moving to Liverpool from AS Roma in 2017.
“I didn’t think at the time that if he had scored it would have been an all-time record,” said Klopp. “So I understand his disappointment, but I’m the coach of the whole team and at that moment we needed fresh legs. It made perfect sense from my point of view.” After all, the guests around the late jokers Harvey Elliott and Ben Doak defended the point, but their own chance to score in the final phase only arose after a mistake by Chelsea goalkeeper Robert Sanchez.
Such a change is “never something against Mo, of course not,” Klopp clarified. “99 percent of the things that we have achieved here, we have achieved because of or with him.”
