Jamie Carragher Questions Mohamed Salah's Move to Trabzonspor
Jamie Carragher did not hide his disbelief.
The former Liverpool defender, speaking on the Football Ramble, admitted he never imagined Mohamed Salah would turn his back on Europe’s traditional power leagues for a move to Trabzonspor.
“I never believed he was going to go to Saudi, because number one, he's too good for that. I think he can be playing in Serie A. Turkey for me feels a level too low,” he said, laying bare a view many inside the European elite quietly share.
Carragher wanted a Serie A heavyweight
For Carragher, the surprise is not that Salah left Liverpool. It’s where he chose to land.
While Trabzonspor celebrate a spectacular coup, Carragher is left wondering why the 34-year-old did not follow what he sees as the Cristiano Ronaldo route: cling to a “prestigious” club, squeeze every last drop out of the highest stage, and only then step away.
He admitted he expected to see Salah in Italy, wearing the shirt of one of the game’s grand institutions rather than a club that finished third in the Super Lig last season.
“I was convinced he'd end up at an AC Milan or Juventus or somewhere like that, maybe his wages were a problem,” Carragher said. “I don't know him, obviously have never spoken to him. But he's like Ronaldo, he's so driven, his numbers mean so much to him. I thought, he can still do this in Turkey by the way, but I thought he'd want to play at a real prestigious club.”
That word – “prestigious” – is the crux of his argument. In Carragher’s eyes, Salah still belongs under the brightest lights, with the biggest crests on his chest and the fiercest scrutiny on his back.
Visibility vs payday
The heart of Carragher’s criticism is simple and blunt: he believes Salah has traded visibility and the weekly strain of top-level competition for a lucrative final contract in a softer league.
To make the deal happen, Trabzonspor reportedly assembled a package worth €17 million per year. Money that turns heads in any boardroom. Money that, Carragher suggests, may have scared off some of Europe’s aristocrats.
Yet this is a player who recently walked away from £400,000 a week at Liverpool. That decision only sharpens Carragher’s confusion. If Salah was prepared to leave that kind of salary behind, why not trim his demands again to force through a move to a club like Milan or Juventus?
“Obviously his wage demands have put a few people off but I thought he might almost curb those demands a little bit to almost get a better club,” Carragher continued. “To go to an AC Milan or Juventus or whoever it may be, play at the San Siro, still playing in big games, still playing in Europe. Turkey just feels like... I just think he's better than that.”
Trabzonspor will be in the Europa League next season, but for Carragher, the occasional European night cannot disguise what he views as a step down in the weekly grind. The Turkish league, he argues, is beneath a forward who has spent the last seven years terrorising defences in what many regard as the most demanding league in the world.
A new kingdom in the Black Sea
Salah, though, looks anything but hesitant.
The “Egyptian King” arrives in the north of Turkey with his mind seemingly made up and his legacy in England already chiselled in stone: Premier League, Champions League, every major club trophy Liverpool could offer. Records broken, eras defined, defenders scarred.
Now he walks into a different kind of cauldron. At Istanbul Atatürk Airport, the reception bordered on the religious. The roar, the flares, the flags – all of it underlined one thing: in Trabzon, he will not just be a star. He will be a symbol.
He will also find familiar faces. Andre Onana, on loan from Manchester United, and former Manchester City defender Stefan Savic are part of a squad being reshaped around European experience and big-game know-how. Trabzonspor last lifted the domestic title in 2022. The gap to Galatasaray and Fenerbahce has since widened, and the club hierarchy is betting heavily that Salah’s presence can drag them back into that fight.
Carragher may see a player underselling himself. Trabzonspor see the man who can tilt a title race.
The question now is not whether Salah could still have graced San Siro or the Allianz Stadium. It’s whether, from the shores of the Black Sea, he can bend an entire league – and perhaps the perception of Turkish football itself – to his will.
