Mohamed Salah could not hold back the tears as he was on the receiving end of a vitriolic dressing-down from Jose Mourinho, former Chelsea teammate John Obi Mikel has recalled.
The Liverpool winger, 30, is regarded as one of the best forwards in the world thanks to his prolific five-and-a-half seasons at Anfield, but things were very different during his time with the Blues. Salah spent an ineffectual two-and-a-half years on the books at Stamford Bridge, scoring just twice in 19 appearances in all competitions.
He joined from Basel for £11million in January 2014 and a challenging first half-season at Chelsea was followed by loan spells at Fiorentina and Roma before he joined the latter permanently in 2016. Salah has made no secret of how hard he found it to adapt to life in the Premier League nearly a decade ago, and his task was made no easier by Mourinho's brutal approach to management.
The decorated Portuguese boss infamously demands total dedication with very little margin for error, which was a lot for the youngster from the Swiss Super League to take in as he adapted to the bright lights of English football. The issue of Salah's underwhelming performances came to a head in early May 2014, when Chelsea were held to a 0-0 draw by Norwich as they squandered the chance to go top of the league.
Mourinho deployed Salah in central midfield but took him off for Eden Hazard at half-time, having "massively ripped into" the Egyptian in front of his teammates. "I think [Salah] was having a bad game and then obviously Mourinho came in and ripped into him, massively ripped into him," Mikel said on the Dubai Eye radio station.
Some players would never recover from such a chastening experience, yet Salah blossomed into one of Europe's most fearsome wingers at Roma and has gone on to score 174 goals in 286 appearances for Liverpool. During his time on Merseyside, he has won every trophy available to him, which Mikel never saw coming having witnessed his scolding by Mourinho back in 2014.
Asked whether he could have predicted Salah would reach the pinnacle of the game, the Nigeria icon 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.
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"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."
Last year, Salah admitted he "couldn't handle the pressure" at Chelsea, leading to him pursuing loan spells in Serie A before ultimately living up to his potential at Liverpool. It appears there is no bad blood between him and Mourinho over his ill-fated stint in west London, with the latter regularly praising his former player in recent years.
