Jurgen Klopp must seriously worry what side-effects his Liverpool side could suffer from Mohamed Salah’s two months of international hell.
Liverpool might be fighting on four fronts but Salah must feel like he’s running on empty after double international heartache. The Egyptian suffered the ultimate torment in Daka after missing the first of his side’s penalty shootout kicks which helped see Senegal skittle them out of the World Cup.
There will be no place in Qatar 2022 for Salah, hot on the heels of missing out in the Africa Cup of Nations, after defeat to Senegal once again. Klopp might think about calling in a counsellor for his mercurial star to help ease the burden of his sorrows.
It’s not as if he can escape the ghosts - there to haunt his every waking hour is team mate Sadio Mane who played a pivotal role in Senegal’s double success. It was Mane who rammed in the deciding penalty to send Salah trudging off the pitch looking every bit as if he had the world on his shoulders. Klopp must be anxious that being put through the wringer could shatter Salah’s appetite for the game at this crucial time in the season.
The German must be gnashing his teeth at the way this brain-shredding trilogy has panned out. To have his two key strikers shredded both emotionally and physically just once would have been enough. But this . . . the two going head-to-head in such encounters is the last thing he would have wanted.
No matter how the dice would have fallen, he will be acutely aware that Liverpool could end up the losers from such a high stakes confrontation. The two of them are big friends off the pitch but the Kop boss won’t need reminding that they have had issues on the pitch in their quest to be masters of their trade.
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None more so than that evening in August 2019 when the small matter of adding to their individual goal tally came to a brief, but telling, head. The 3-0 win over Burnley might have been totally expected but what happened on the pitch certainly wasn’t. Mane was incensed when Salah chose to shoot rather than play in his better-placed team mate and made no secret of the fact.
It was Mane who revealed afterwards that they had sorted it out straight after the game but what price being a fly on the wall as that conversation took place? They have been gunslingers in tandem for the five years since Salah arrived and have hit heights few could have expected.
They have bagged over 250 goals between them firing Liverpool to English, European and World crowns. They have sweat blood to prove they are right up there with the very best both individually and as partners, each surpassing Didier Drogba’s 104 goals to set new benchmarks for African goalscorers in the Premier League.
Now, with the Anfield machine hurtling towards a unique quadruple, Klopp must be keeping a careful eye on both to assess just how much the rigours of recent weeks might have taken out of them.
