Right now, Mohamed Salah makes around $20 million a year playing for Premier League leader Liverpool. Saleh is 32 years old, and he is at the peak of his soccer career.
At the end of the 2024-2025 Premier League season, Salah will be a free agent and his pending free agency has been a source of consternation for Liverpool-
It should be...Mohamed Salah is about to get paid.
Mo Salah's agent keeps saying that talks have stalled. Yeah, the agent stalled them. Someone in the Saudi Pro League, I don't who, whether it be Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ahli, or Al-Ittihad, is going to pay Mo Salah One Billion Dollars.
I am not exaggerating for effect. I am not using hyperbole.
Right now, there are two Major League Baseball players making about three-quarters of a billion dollars over the length of their contracts: Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani. Salah will shatter the highest paid athlete threshold at 10 figures.
What's going to happen is once Mo Salah hits the free agent market, one of the four Saudi teams listed above is going to offer him an 8-year, one-billion-dollar contract. Liverpool can't even offer Salah half that.
Even more enticing, Salah won't have to play for Cups he doesn't care about, like the FA Cup or the Caraboa Cup. He will play with his (to be determined) club team for the Saudi Arabian Championship. He will continue to play for Egypt, right next door. And, I think, that Saudi Arabia is going to get a wild-card spot in the Champions League.
Less games, and a shit-ton more money.
And....
Mohamed Salah is Egyptian. The Saudis want to make sure someone from the Middle East is the first billion-dollar athlete and they know that Ronaldo is simply a mercenary. Salah will be marketed to the world as the next Messi, or Ronaldo, depending on your preference, and will be the benefactor of a world-wide marketing campaign trying to center the soccer world around the Middle East. He will be engrained into Middle Eastern culture more by playing in Saudi Arabia than if he were to take a fraction of the money to stay in England.
You think that I have an active imagination?
There's an excellent chance that Saleh signs that contract this summer in Saudi Arabia.
Next year, the 2026 World Cup will be in America and if qualifying ended today, Egypt would be there. Mo Salah will be the talk of America at 33 years old. There will be merchandising opportunities everywhere.
At 37, Salah will be the face of the Spain/Morocco/Portugal World Cup that will be angled as Europe vs. The Middle East. The storylines will write themselves
And at 41, the World Cup will be in Saudi Arabia, and Salah's workload will have been managed so he can be marketed as a World Soccer Ambassador-
You would take substantially less money to stay in England?
No, you wouldn't.
This summer, soccer is going change. The Saudis have laid the groundwork for it, all Salah has to do is walk through that door and collect that check.
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