It was no surprise to hear the decibel levels rise significantly inside the Al Maktoum Stadium on Sunday evening as Mohamed Salah stepped out for his pre-match warm-up.
While every player within the Liverpool squad was treated to loud cheers from almost all of the near-15,000 inside the home of Al Nasr prior to the Dubai Super Cup friendly with Lyon, it was the 'Egyptian King' who inevitably commanded the most attention.
As the poster-boy of Arabic football, it is no exaggeration to suggest Salah is a hero to hundreds of millions of people. His rise, from humble beginnings at Egyptian club Al Mokawloon to the Premier League superstardom, has been well documented.
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By now, everyone knows about the accomplishments, both collectively and individually, of a player who has swept the board of top-level football since he traded Roma for Liverpool in the summer of 2017. But perhaps what is even more staggering is Salah's impact away from the confines of the football pitch.
In 2019, just weeks after Salah had helped Liverpool to Champions League glory in Madrid, research by Stanford University found an 18.9% drop in anti-Muslim hate crimes on Merseyside in the two years that Salah had been at the club.
“The survey experiment suggests that these results may be driven by increased familiarity with Islam,” the report read. “These findings suggest that positive exposure to outgroup celebrities can reveal new and humanising information about the group at large, reducing prejudiced attitudes and behaviours. Overall, we interpret these results to support the hypothesis that Salah’s arrival at Liverpool FC caused a decrease in extreme acts of bigotry.”
“He is like an Arab version of Steven Gerrard," said Yousaf Majid in 2018 at the age of 13. "He is a great player, well respected, and I think it is great for all Muslims everywhere because it sends out a good message,”
“I’ve personally suffered from bullying about things that have happened (Muslim terrorist attacks) so to have someone who is an Arab at one of the most successful clubs it makes people think: ‘Wait, are all Arabs like this? Really, are all Muslims bad?’. I think that makes Muslims feel safer because it makes people think about what they are going to say.”
But while Salah has become an adopted Liverpudlian to the point where the Scouse dialect has even gently crept into his accent at times, it is the Arab world who the Liverpool icon truly represents on the global stage.
"Mo is deeply loved and idolised in the Arab world, especially among the youngsters," says Mo Sinan, a Dubai-based Liverpool supporter originally from Iraq. "He’s a man of people! His own story is widely known about how tough his life was, travelling from his hometown of Nagrig to Cairo to train and play football.
"He lived like any younger kid in that region with a dream willing to be fulfilled. His people adore him because simply, he’s one of them and he lived a similar life to them.
"What makes other Arab and Middle Easterners love him too is the bond - the culture and the language they share together - that's been a huge asset for Salah. People from Egypt’s neighboring countries and the Gulf aren’t much different than Egyptians in terms of language and culture, hence why he’s so deeply loved by people of this region. They feel he’s one of their own people."
"Mo Salah is a football icon and idol in our Arab world," adds Majed Alhashmi, who runs the Instagram account 'UAE Kopites'.
After over five years in English football as one of its top stars, Salah is a conundrum: A naturally modest and shy man whose matter-of-fact belief in his own God-given ability sometimes can be mistaken for hubris.
On one hand, he is the humble humanitarian; a family man who rarely speaks to the media. And yet he can also be seen gracing the covers of GQ magazine and starring in adverts for Gucci. It's these contrasts that make it difficult for anyone looking to lazily fit the Liverpool forward into any one particular box. On the contrary, it is these wildly different character traits that make him so fascinating as a sportsman and as a brand.
There's a story that is told about Salah in Egypt about him bringing food from his village in Basyoun as a 10-year-old to feed the dogs that would congregate around the areas where he used to train. Nowadays his charity extends to him using his status and wealth to help animal rights causes, local nurseries and Leukemia treatments for children. Salah has also built a religious institution in his homeland for children to study. He is far from an ordinary footballer, even if the negative stereotype of an elite-level performer is often highly inaccurate and unfair.
"Salah is not only loved because he is a great player but because he's a man of his own people, he cares for them," adds Mo, who was at the Al Maktoum Stadium for Sunday's 3-1 defeat to Lyon. "By June of this year Salah has helped build a hospital, a school, a youth football centre and an ambulance unit in his own village of Nagrig.
"He also funded building a treatment plant to get clean and safe water there too. His values are always impressive and that’s because, although he left his country 10 years ago, he still feels deeply connected to his home and its people. That is what has made him loved like no other public figure."
Such is Salah's star power and the attention he inevitably garners when out in public, Liverpool do not always ask their top scorer to fulfill too many off-the-field commitments, with younger players often asked to take the lead in an effort to prepare them for life in the public eye. But it was telling to note that the No.11 took part in Liverpool's visit to some local children earlier this week. His value to the club goes beyond what he is able to do on the pitch and it's been said by several long-time residents of Dubai, who the ECHO have spoken to this week, that the supporter-base of the Reds has swelled considerably since the Egyptian ascended to elite status within the game.
Majed adds: "Mo Salah is an Arab hero and his donations, especially in the health and education sector, helps to improve a lot of lives all over the world and not only in our region. Of course Salah has become one of the greatest players in the world and has proven that no matter who you are or where you come from, if you have the talent and put in the hard work, you will be a success. His career will influence the young children, especially in our Arab region."
If this trip to Dubai is more football-focused than a traditional pre-season tour of regions like the Far East and the United States, Salah's incredible standing across the entire Middle East should at least lead to FSG and Liverpool asking the question if a more commercially-driven return trip might be in order before his time at Anfield is over. The fanbase is certainly here.
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