Mohamed Salah Joins Trabzonspor: A New Chapter Begins

Mohamed Salah’s next chapter will not be written in Saudi Arabia, nor in the familiar glare of the Premier League, but on the Black Sea coast. The Liverpool great is on the brink of completing a surprise move to Trabzonspor – and he has already sent his first message to the club’s supporters.

The 34-year-old, who closed the book on a glittering nine-year spell at Anfield earlier this summer, mutually agreed to cancel the final year of his Liverpool contract to seek a new challenge. For weeks, the expectation pointed elsewhere. Saudi Arabia circled. Besiktas held talks and looked poised to bring him to Istanbul, only for that move to collapse late on.

Trabzonspor stepped into the gap and moved decisively. On Tuesday night the club confirmed they had entered transfer negotiations with Salah and announced that he would arrive in Trabzon on Wednesday. Hours later, they went a step further: photographs emerged of the Egyptian icon in a Trabzonspor shirt for the first time, the number 61 emblazoned on his back – a number steeped in local pride, drawn from the city’s telephone code and worn as a badge of identity across the region.

On his flight to Turkey, Salah pulled the claret-and-blue jersey over his shoulders and spoke directly to his new fanbase in a short video, his first public words about the move.

“Trabzon, are you ready?” he said. “I can hear you. See you very soon. Bize Her Yer Trabzon! (Everywhere is Trabzon for us!)”

The message was brief but calculated. A superstar who became a symbol in Liverpool wasted no time tapping into the motto that defines his new club’s support.

Trabzonspor followed up their teaser of an Egyptian pyramid with a formal statement, confirming the scale of what is about to unfold. “Public Announcement. Negotiations have begun regarding the transfer of professional footballer Mohamed Salah to our Club,” they declared, before setting out the logistics of his arrival.

They detailed that Salah, “with whom we have begun transfer negotiations, will be at Istanbul Atatürk Airport General Aviation Terminal at 12:00 on Wednesday, August 5. The player is scheduled to arrive in Trabzon on the same day in the evening hours. The time and other details regarding the welcome program in Trabzon will be shared with the public through our club's official communication channels during the day.”

Salah is expected to sign a two-year deal with the Turkish side, a move that will send a jolt through the Süper Lig and transform the landscape of the title race. For Liverpool, it underlines the definitive end of an era. For Trabzon, it signals something else entirely: a club with fierce local identity hitching its ambitions to one of the defining forwards of his generation.

The only question now is how loud that welcome will be when he finally steps out into a city that already claims everywhere as its own.