MEZIESBLOG

In June 2022, while holidaying on the turquoise-tinged waters of El Gouna along Egypt’s Red Sea, Mohamed Salah was forced to first contemplate leaving Liverpool.

His contract was up the following summer and two years’ worth of negotiations between his advisor, or more appropriately his “partner” Ramy Abbas, and the club’s power brokers failed to result in a consensus.

Liverpool sent in three proposals, all of which were a distance away from the terms drafted on Salah’s behalf. “I am starting to fear that we may not be able to come to an agreement on a new contract, Mohamed – their latest offer is still very far from what we want,” Abbas told him during a lengthy phone call.

It wasn’t what Salah, who was determined to remain at Anfield, was minded to hear. His daughters were born in the city, loved school, their friends and their life. Uprooting them was not on Salah’s agenda.

But there were a host of issues with negotiations; the player felt a new contract should reflect his contributions to the club and his status as their decisive edge, while Liverpool were being sustainable in trying to forecast future service and any potential dips due to his age.

The split in remuneration between fixed and variable payments, the latter related to individual and team performance, as well as the finer print of how bonuses would be applied, was a big sticking point.

The negotiation around Salah’s image rights was also complex and Abbas described trying to get the renewal over the line – which happened within a month of the pair thinking an agreement would not be found – as “the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Until now. While there are similarities between the process of the forward’s last contract extension and the current state of play, the stakes and the risks for both parties have ballooned.

Time is on the side of neither. Salah is 34 days away from being permitted to sign a pre-deal with an overseas club and seven months off from being able to wave farewell to Anfield as a free agent.

Liverpool, still heavily reliant on his gifts, have yet to make an offer they feel he would consider – or even just slightly amend. That is the marker that there is plenty of ground separating Salah’s expectations and their allowance, which of course, does not exist in isolation.

Liverpool have the gigantic problem of Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold being out of contract this summer too, and while the latter has the ace of Real Madrid’s interest, sources maintain negotiations around Salah are the most complex given his worth – not just on the pitch, but off it too.

He is, quite admirably, fully aware of it. The “conservative estimation” from Abbas ahead of the July 2022 extension was for the “total amount received by Mohamed and the image rights companies over the next few years from both his playing contract and his image rights contracts to be somewhere between €54m [£46.8m] and €62m [£53.7m] per year.”

It is no wonder then that Harvard Business School chose to feature the length and breadth of that renegotiation in its business of entertainment, media and sport programme for MBA students.

Back then, Jurgen Klopp offered that “extending a contract with a player like Mo is not something where you meet for a cup of tea in the afternoon and find an agreement.”

Amid what is an exhaustive process, there is a sea of hope for those desperate to see Salah continue being Liverpool’s gold dust: the bottom line is he wants exactly that, and so do the club.

That is the fundamental point underpinning negotiations, now for the compromise.