Mohamed Salah has become a legend at Liverpool, but a newly-told tale from his earlier days in the Premier League has underlined just how far he has come.
A former Premier League teammate of Liverpool star Mohamed Salah has lifted the lid on the time the forward was reduced to tears following a ticking off in the dressing room.
The winger, who is now adored by supporters on the Kop, went through a more difficult spell earlier in his career at Premier League rivals Chelsea where he played under José Mourinho. The Stamford Bridge club beat Liverpool to Salah’s signature back in 2014 but the Egyptian never hit it off in West London and played one-and-a-half seasons for the Blues before spending 18 months on loan in Serie A, first at Fiorentina and then AS Roma.
Now, a former teammate from Salah’s Chelsea stint has revealed the time that the forward was reduced to tears in the dressing room after Mourinho ‘massively ripped into him’. The now AS Roma boss allegedly ‘took off’ on the striker and he was subsequently withdrawn for the second half of the game in question.
Speaking on Dubai Eye, former Blues midfielder John Obi Mikel said: “I think [Salah] was having a bad game and then obviously Mourinho came in and ripped into him… massively ripped into him.”
Addressing whether he envisaged Salah going on to have the career he had, Mikel responded: “No. He was in tears, and what happened is [Mourinho] didn’t let him back onto the pitch in the second half. He took him off.”
“It would have been easy to just take him off and say ‘you’re not playing well, off you go, sit down, you’re not going back onto the pitch.’ But he ripped into him and took him off.”
Salah has gone on to have a storied career at Anfield after joining the club from AS Roma back in the summer of 2017 and incredibly now stands at seventh in the club’s all-time goal-scoring charts — ahead of legends Kenny Dalglish and Michael Owen.
