By John O’Leary
Things have really taken off in the career of Mohamed Salah this season. Everyone knew about the Egyptian’s pace and ability to get in behind defenses from his time at Roma, but no one could have anticipated the level he has reached at Liverpool this season.
For many casual football fans, the first time that they would have seen Salah play football live was when he joined Chelsea in 2014 for a fee of around £11 million from the Swiss club Basel.
Basel
Salah joined Basel following a good performance in the second half of a match between the club and the Egypt under-23 national team. The match was organized in response to the Port Said Stadium disaster, which tragically saw 74 people killed and more than 500 injured.
Having scored two goals in the second half, Basel invited Salah to stay behind with the club and just under one month later, it was announced he had signed a four-year contract. Salah joined Basel just as they were losing Xherdan Shaqiri to Bayern Munich, and he was seen as the man to replace the outgoing midfield player.
However, Salah’s journey to where he is at with Liverpool today started long before he arrived in Switzerland. His career began at the age of 14 when he signed a contract with Arab Contractors, a team also known as El Mokawloon.
Arab Contractors
Salah faced long bus journeys to get to training each day and was given permission to spend just two hours at school, in order to get to daily training on time. His determination and hard work paid off and Salah made his first team debut in 2009/10. He quickly became a regular in the first team the following season and fans started looking upon the high flying forward as their next superstar player.
During his days as young player, Salah would turn up at school at 7am, work until 9am and then set off on his journey to Cairo for training. Having trained with the team, Salah would need to return home, so he could attend school the following morning and that saw another long bus journey, with multiple stops, before arriving home at around 10pm.
Salah would go to bed late and then wake up early the next day and repeat the whole process again.
National Recognition
Having broken into the first team at Arab Contractors, Salah made his debut for the Egypt national team at the age of 19. It took just a month for Salah to register his first goal for Egypt, and he was the top scorer for Egypt with five goals during the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification. He also scored both goals in the decisive 2–1 victory over Congo, which propelled the Pharaohs to their first World Cup since 1990.
Salah is fast becoming a global phenomenon, but it all started from very humble beginnings and a four hour daily bus trip. These days, Salah is used to traveling all over the world for big games, but now in luxurious transport rather than the buses of his youth.