Liverpool FC Face $100 Million Mohamed Salah Transfer Decision

The dilemma facing the Liverpool FC hierarchy is no secret.

Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino all have less than 18-months remaining on their contracts.

Each of them will be in their 30s when the deals expire, so, realistically, these will be the last big contracts they can demand.

One thing we know for sure is that the much-lauded data analytics department at the Merseysider’s will have been crunching the numbers to assess what length of a contract to offer who.

Members of that team are known to refrain from watching games to avoid the possibility that their judgments become influenced by what they see with their eyes.

The arrival of Diogo Jota last year was the first indication that Liverpool was preparing for life beyond the Salah, Mane and Firmino era.

And the imminent arrival of Porto winger Luis Diaz is an even bigger sign that perhaps not all of its renowned attackers will be kept.

The fascinating question is who will be let go?

That both Jota and Diaz are right-footed suggests it won’t be Mohamed Salah and, based on the exceptional form of the Egyptian, many have expressed disbelief at the idea owners Fenway Sports Group would part with someone putting up such incredible numbers.

But as the Boston Red Sox owners demonstrated with their trade of baseball star Mookie Betts in 2019 they are prepared to let a star player leave if the salary becomes too eye-watering.

Thanks to the vast improvements in sports science the age at which soccer players can continue to perform at the highest level has been steadily increasing since the 1990s.

But that doesn’t mean that handing a 30-year-old a contract worth $402,000-$508,000 per week that Salah is reportedly demanding is not without risk.

An old man’s game?

When discussing the situation with Mo Salah’s contract Klopp has pointed out how the age of some of the best players has been going up.

“How football is [now],” he said, “the best players in the world, two-three years ago, were 33-34 […] that’s the best age of a footballer.

“You understand the game better, you can judge the pitch better, you can see situations long before they will happen.”

As I’ve pointed out in a previous article, one of the most noticeable shifts in world soccer in the last couple of years has been the longevity of elite players.

Only two in the top 10 scorers in Europe were younger than 25 and at some of the biggest sides, their stars were well in their thirties.

Real Madrid’s top striker remains 34-year-old Karim Benzema and Bayern Munich’s best forward, Robert Lewandowski, is 33.

But, of course, the two players who’ve been distorting those lists for years are the 34-year-old Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, who is 36.

Their continued exploits show how soccer has changed, the greatest players of the generation before, like the Brazilian Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane, tended to retire at the same age Messi is now and if they got to Ronaldo’s age they certainly weren’t playing for teams like Manchester United.

In that era, the expectation was that there would also be a significant drop-off in performance past the age of 30.

Manchester United even used to have a club policy that it would only offer players over the age of 30 a one-year deal.

But it would be ludicrous to suggest that Messi and Ronaldo weren’t outliers and that it could be an expectation that players could continue as they have done into their 30s.

And, as FSG will know, the data suggests that too.  

The Messi and Ronaldo conundrum: Can you spot an outlier?

Last year analysts at the Athletic examined data over the past 10 years to assess what the peak age was for different positions.

One of the interesting findings from the piece was about wingers who they found peaked at the age of 26.

Wide-men were also found to have a substantial decrease in the number of times they’d take on opponents in a match as they got older.

The average number of times a winger tried to go past a defender went from 4.5 per game at the age of 21 to 2.0 aged 32, by the age of 35 they were only attempting to go past an opponent once a game.

Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane take care of themselves, but there is one unavoidable fact, when you get older it’s harder to have the same impact on the game, particularly from the wing.

A common thread between all of the players playing at the very top of the game in their mid-thirties from Jamie Vardy to David Silva is that they tend to play through the middle.

In the case of Messi, this trend is even more extreme, he is now known to walk for long periods of a match but remains central so sudden flurries of influence can happen in parts of the pitch that matter.

Ronaldo prefers loitering on the left-wing, but his most effective performances have come when he’s been a presence in the middle and his pressing off-the-ball is often criticized for weakening the whole team.

Currently, Salah and Mane are operating brilliantly in wider positions, they relish taking on opponents, spinning in behind defenders and pressing to win back possession.

But, by the point their new contracts kick in they’ll be reaching an age when it will be harder to do all of those things consistently for 90 minutes and effectively for a full season.

They will need to adapt certain aspects of their game or perhaps even move to a central role.

In this regard, Firmino, despite being older than the other two, might have an advantage.

His game has become more based on linking the play and bringing out the best in the wide players, his goalscoring has been criticized in recent years which means he would undoubtedly be the more affordable option.

The hardest thing for everyone involved will be removing emotion from any decision. 

When you have players like Mane, Salah and Firmino who’ve hit such heights making cold calculated decisions about their future is a challenge.

Even more so when you are making a risk assessment about what they might do in four or five years. 

With Salah the choice is undoubtedly the most fascinating do Liverpool give him a $100 million five-year deal or do they sell him for a similar price?