Mohamed Salah Leaves Liverpool for Trabzonspor on Free Transfer
Mohamed Salah’s Liverpool story is over. Not with a farewell tour, not with a final title charge, but with a contract torn up a year early and a new chapter waiting on the Black Sea.
The 34-year-old has agreed to terminate his Liverpool deal, which was due to run until April 2025, and is set to join Turkish side Trabzonspor on a free transfer. A nine-year spell at Anfield, packed with goals, trophies and global superstardom, ends not with a roar but with a jolt.
A Giant Walks Away
Strip it back and the numbers are staggering. Seven major trophies. Third on Liverpool’s all-time scoring list.
257 goals in 442 games from the right flank.
Salah arrived as a talented wide forward. He leaves as one of the club’s greatest players, a figure mentioned in the same breath as the icons of Anfield’s past. He drove Liverpool to a Premier League title, a Champions League crown and a sustained era of relevance at the very top of the European game.
And yet, the final act has been messy.
This past season turned sour. Salah found himself dropped, his relationship with then head coach Arne Slot breaking down in full public view. The flashpoint came at Leeds, where omission from the starting XI was followed by a bombshell interview that made it clear the harmony of the Klopp years had gone.
From that moment, the clock on his Liverpool career started to tick louder.
From £150m Rejection to Free Departure
Less than three years ago, Liverpool were turning down £150m from Al Ittihad for Salah. The Saudi Pro League had made him its marquee target, the kind of statement signing that would sit alongside the biggest names they had already lured.
Liverpool resisted. Salah stayed. The goals kept coming.
But the landscape shifted. Form dipped, tension rose, and the certainty that he would finish his peak years in red evaporated. For a long time, Saudi Arabia still looked like the obvious next stop – the money, the status, the chance to be the face of a league still aggressively building its profile.
Instead, he is heading to the Turkish Superlig.
Trabzonspor, third last season and bound for the Europa League playoffs, have moved into a market that once felt well beyond their reach. They are not offering the kind of financial package Saudi clubs can put on the table, but they are offering something else: a central role, a passionate football city, and the chance to remain in European competition.
Why Trabzonspor?
Former Premier League defender John Curtis, speaking on Sky Sports News’ Transfer Show, did not dance around the obvious.
“The obvious one is the money. I'm sure,” he said, with reports suggesting a salary in the region of £17m a year. That figure still comes in a little below what Salah earned at Liverpool and “significantly less” than what Saudi Arabia could have offered.
So this is not just a cash grab. It is a calculated step down in terms of club stature, but a move that keeps Salah in the European spotlight and in a league that still burns with intensity.
Curtis pointed to the adjustment that awaits.
“It's very easy to play with top players,” he said. At Liverpool, Salah operated alongside some of the finest footballers in the world, in one of the most finely tuned attacking systems of the era. Moving to a team outside that elite bubble changes everything – the speed of combination play, the quality of service, the level of tactical cohesion.
“Is this a step down? Obviously, those players are very good players, but most Salah is used to working with the very best, and that impacts you as a player. So, again, it becomes a little bit of a shock.”
That is the challenge in front of him now. He will no longer be part of a machine built to compete for Champions Leagues. He will be the star asked to drag a good side into something more.
A New Stage, A Different Spotlight
Trabzonspor will welcome him as a superstar. The club’s fanbase is famously fervent, its home games intense and unforgiving for opponents. Salah will walk into a dressing room that has never housed a player of his global profile, into a league that still treasures the marquee foreign name.
He will also step into a Europa League campaign that offers him a platform to prove he can still decide big nights. For a player who has defined himself on those stages, that matters.
Liverpool, meanwhile, must live with the reality that one of their defining modern players has gone for nothing, a free transfer a short time after a £150m bid sat on the table. The decision then made sense: they were still chasing titles, still in their prime cycle. The decision now is different: a clean break after a difficult season, a dressing room reset, a new era without the man who once carried so much of their attacking threat.
Salah leaves Anfield as a legend, but not untouched by the bruises of his final campaign. He arrives in Trabzon as a symbol of ambition, but also as a 34-year-old forward with something to prove.
Is this the gentle fade of a great career, or the start of one last, defiant act on a new stage?
