Mohamed Salah is to Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool what Robert Lewandowski was to his Borussia Dortmund side. Both lead the team from the front by scoring plenty of goals. However, the German claims Salah to be his “top” signing.
The German has had the privilege of coaching some of football’s most lethal finishers. His Borussia side was spearheaded by Lewandowski – a goal-machine in every sense of the word. Meanwhile, at Liverpool, Klopp directed the goalscoring duties to Salah. The Egyptian certainly repaid his faith, scoring a whopping 124 goals in 200 appearances – so far.
When asked to rank Salah among his best-ever signings – a list which included the likes of Lewandowski and Shinji Kagawa – Klopp placed him at the “top”.
“Top – absolutely top. But it is not about signing. You can sign a player but then we all are responsible, so the player obviously is as well and the coaches, to make it happen.
“Let me say it like this: two players, there’s Robert Lewandowski, who I signed for a different amount of money years ago – well, not years ago, but it feels like – who had an incredible development from a different level, but an incredible development.”
Klopp said in an earlier interview.
Klopp continued to sing praises of his hitman during the interview, remarking him for his overall development while also focusing on his off-pitch persona.
“With Mo, [to go] from the guy who scores from time to time and is a really good football player to this goalscoring machine is a massive development,”
“He is an outstanding signing, but for sure the way he developed, the way he treats himself, the game preparation, the training preparation, training attitude and all these kind of things, that’s exceptional.
“That’s a real role model and he deserves all that, absolutely”
he continued.
Salah arrived at Liverpool in 2017 from AS Roma for an initial £36.5m fee and became an instant favorite of the Kop. He scored 32 goals in his first league season – 44 across all competitions in 52 appearances – as Liverpool finished fourth. He helped the Reds reach the UCL final but was injured within the opening minutes due to a rash tackle by Sergio Ramos.
Nonetheless, Salah would return to the same stage with Liverpool during the subsequent season. Only this time, he would leave as a Champions League winner. He scored 27 goals across all competitions – a good return but a significant drop from his previous season’s tally of 44. A 23-goal season followed in 2019/20 as Liverpool were crowned champions of England for the first time in the Premier League era. The Egyptian has scored 30 goals so far this season and is the joint-top scorer in the league – alongside Harry Kane (21 each).
Meanwhile, over in Germany, Klopp’s former goal-machine is on course to break a long-standing league record. Robert Lewandowski has scored 39 goals in 32 league matches. He is one away from matching Gerd Muller’s record of most goals in a single season, another one from breaking it outright.
Lewandowski left Klopp’s Dortmund in 2014 to sign for rivals Bayern Munich. He has since scored 292 goals for the Bavarians in 327 appearances. His strikes have helped the German giants win seven of their nine consecutive league titles, while individually, he was crowned as The Best FIFA’s Men’s Player of the Year in 2020.
In his seven years at the club, Lewandowski has hit at least 40 goals in all of his seasons, bar one. He is on track to score 50 goals in consecutive seasons and needs just four more goals to hit that mark.
