Mohamed Salah's Saudi Move: Three Non-Negotiables

Mohamed Salah has signalled he is ready to swap Anfield for Saudi Arabia – but only on his terms, and they are anything but small.

The Liverpool great, whose departure this summer was confirmed weeks ago, has “granted approval” to a move to the Saudi Pro League, according to reports in Saudi outlet Marebpress. Yet any deal will hinge on a three-point checklist that underlines both his stature and his ambition.

Salah’s Saudi stance: three non-negotiables

Salah, 33, is leaving Liverpool a year before the end of his £400,000‑a‑week contract after a bruising season on and off the pitch. The club staggered to fifth, Diogo Jota’s tragic death cast a shadow over the campaign, and the breakdown in his relationship with Arne Slot ultimately cost the Dutchman his job.

That fractured dynamic, Dejan Lovren now claims, is the real reason Liverpool’s No.11 is walking away.

While the chapter on his nine-year spell at Anfield is closed, the next one is already being drafted in the Gulf. Marebpress reports that Salah has received a formal offer from a Saudi club, but the financial package falls short of what he was previously offered before renewing with Liverpool.

So the forward has laid down his conditions.

• First, the money. Salah wants an annual salary and financial benefits that match his global status and commercial pull. This is not a late‑career cash-out; it is a demand to be paid at the very top of the sporting pyramid.
• Second, security. He is seeking a contract of two or three years to lock in stability at what is likely to be the defining move of the final phase of his career.
• Third, and perhaps most telling, the project. Salah will only join a club he believes can genuinely compete for major trophies, not one content to simply make up the numbers.

Those demands align with previous indications that any Saudi move would likely include one of the biggest contracts in sport and an ambassadorial role to help promote football in the country. The money is vast, the stage even bigger. Salah wants both.

Lovren vs Carragher: the fallout turns personal

If Salah’s future looks destined for the Middle East, the debate over his Liverpool exit is raging firmly back home.

Many supporters would have preferred to see him stay until 2027, to finish what he started. Liverpool, though, are already deep into succession planning, with Yan Diomande identified as their leading target to step into the forward line.

Around the edges of that rebuild, the arguments are getting sharper.

Dejan Lovren, Salah’s closest friend in football and a former Liverpool defender, has launched a fierce defence of the Egyptian and a stinging attack on Jamie Carragher’s criticism.

“The way they treated him this season is not harsh. It’s disgusting,” Lovren told Winwin. “Why didn’t they talk about him like this for the past eight or nine years? Tell me… OK, one season, and then he’s the target again. There are so many other issues.”

Lovren then turned his fire directly on pundits, and on Carragher in particular.

“He’s being really heavily criticised. Some pundits do it just to attract attention, maybe because they haven’t succeeded in other areas of their lives, so now they need to perform well… especially Carragher, he says whatever he wants. I always said he should tell him this to his face, say all these things to Mo to his face.

“He’ll never say that. Because I know he never will, because he never said it to me. He’s talked badly about me too, but he never said that to me anyway. You know, he’s just performing on TV and he gets paid for it, so he needs to perform this way.”

Slot under fire, Klopp in contrast

Lovren did not stop at the pundits. He drew a straight line between Salah’s decision to leave and his relationship with Arne Slot.

“I don’t think it’s the management (that pushed Salah to leave). I think it’s just one person, and I think it’s just the manager. They didn’t have a good relationship. Let’s put it simply,” Lovren said.

“With Klopp, he had a really good relationship. It wasn’t always perfect, but they knew each other very well, let’s say that too, and they trusted each other, they liked each other, and Mo gave everything on the pitch for Klopp, and Klopp gave him that trust. But (with Slot) it was the opposite. It’s that simple, and everyone knows it because when you look at the previous eight or nine seasons, he did really well.”

In Lovren’s eyes, the dressing room also failed its star forward.

“There are other players who should also take responsibility and say, ‘yes, this is my fault’, but you know, some players never came forward.

“There was mismanagement; internally, they didn’t handle it well. They didn’t handle it well. Even if you have some problems, you have to talk about it in the dressing room, and like I said, Mo never felt that support. He was always the front-page headline, ‘Ah, it’s Mohamed Salah, don’t be surprised.’ I mean… it’s a deep-seated issue.”

So Liverpool move on, reshaping a forward line that has revolved around Salah for nearly a decade. Saudi Arabia waits, ready to test just how far it will go to meet the demands of a modern icon.

The next move is his – and the price of it will say everything about how the game values one of its defining figures of the era.