It is wrong to say that Mohamed Salah’s journey is a one-in-a-million story.
The odds of this boy making it from the rocky football pitches of Nagrig on Egypt’s Nile Delta, to the Premier League and the super-stardom that came with it, are in fact a lot greater than that.
To truly trace the Salah story, as Daily Mail Sport will do over the next five days, with behind-the-scenes anecdotes on what makes Liverpool’s departing Egyptian King so special, the only place to start is the village where he first kicked a ball, home to roughly 20,000 people at the last count.
‘If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor,’ goes the James song Sit Down that Liverpool fans soon adopted to serenade Salah, their new man ‘running down the wing’.
But that line is worth flipping on its head. The fact Salah experienced such a spartan way of life back home gives every one of his achievements just that little bit more weight.
A shy boy, Salah had never left the countryside when he was spotted playing for Ittihad Basyoun by a scout called Reda El-Mallah. Shortly after, he was invited to join El-Mokawloon’s youth team in Cairo.
A young Mohamed Salah in his Al-Mokawloon days in Egypt. He would go on to become one of the world’s greatest players
A mural of Salah adorns the wall of a sports and youth centre in his home village of Nagrig in Egypt
Good news, right? The catch, as first reported in these pages by Dominic King, was that this team trained four hours away.
To make matters worse, the road to Cairo from Nagrig had no name and was essentially a rocky path where a bus would rely on enough passengers turning up to cover the petrol.
Once the four-leg journey was complete, the 12-year-old would be zapped of energy given the searing heat. But still he would flourish on the pitch.
His father, Ghaly, is a quiet but humble man, happy to reply to messages but keen not to talk publicly, so as not to detract from his son’s achievements. Yet he was a crucial influence in those early days – both in paying for those long bus journeys and also giving his boy the motivation to complete them.
‘I would complain that I didn’t want to travel four hours to training,’ said Salah in 2018. ‘But (my father) stood by me and told me that all great players go through this. The price for him was very high, and I’ll never forget the role he played in my career.’
Salah’s coach, Said El Shishiny, decided that the journeys were too much so gave him a room in the club’s lodgings, a move approved by club president Ibrahim Mahlab, who went on to serve as Egypt’s prime minister. They talk about Salah crying even after huge wins for the team, if he did not score.
Soon, though, he was getting noticed. At the Under-20 World Cup in 2011, for example, where Basel’s sporting director Georg Heitz liked what he saw. He knew, though, that there were very few success stories of players signed from Egypt.
Heitz also was aware that Salah was not playing for one of the country’s so-called big two of Al Ahly or Zamalek, whose club president refused to sign him because he ‘was not good enough’, according to Egyptian football expert Ismael Mahmoud.
Swipe the image above to see how Salah has changed over the years, since his 2013 goal for Basel against Chelsea in the Champions League group stage
‘We all thank God – and thank Mamdouh Abbas, the Zamalek club president – for that opinion and decision, because every player’s dream was to play for Al Ahly or Zamalek,’ says Mahmoud. ‘If a player moves to either of these teams, they get huge salaries compared to some European clubs.’
Mahmoud is hinting that Basel would have been unable to sign Salah, and the story the Swiss club set in motion, the one we are honouring with this series, would never have happened. Without being snubbed by Zamalek, many think this gem would not have been unearthed.
In early 2012, Egyptian football was halted due to the Port Said Massacre, when 74 people were killed and more than 500 injured as thousands of Al Masry fans invaded the pitch and attacked Al Ahly supporters with clubs, stones, machetes, fireworks and bottles.
With this in mind, Basel helped the Egyptian team prepare for the upcoming London Olympics by inviting their Under 23s to a friendly. Salah wowed those watching, flourishing in freezing cold Swiss conditions he wasn’t accustomed to – and so they signed him.
Salah was still not really a superstar back home at this point, yet this is when he started to donate thousands a month to his village. Over time, he has helped to build football pitches, sewage treatment works and a medical centre.
The Egyptian government, which under the rule of Hosni Mubarak had plunged places like Nagrig into crisis with legislation that was ruinous for farmers, were not keen on Salah’s philanthropy, as it put the spotlight on these poorly-funded rural towns.
At Basel, meanwhile, they were taken aback by Salah’s talent. A beautiful city on the River Rhine, it was the perfect place for Salah to take the next step.
Heiko Vogel was in charge at Basel back then. At half-time of a friendly against Partizan Belgrade shortly after Salah’s arrival, he told sporting director Heitz that he might need to substitute their new Egyptian off. He was too good, and they were scared he might get injured.
Salah scores for Egypt in the 2012 Olympics against New Zealand at Old Trafford – it was to become a happy hunting ground for him with Liverpool too
‘Mo was a friendly, young, and confident man who immediately impressed me with his open manner,’ Vogel tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘He wanted to know everything about the club and the city of Basel.
‘Above all, his eyes sparkled every time he talked about football. Mo was only 21 years old, but even back then he already knew exactly what he wanted for himself. That was anything but a given, and it is certainly one of the aspects that helped him throughout his career.
‘He was already a star. His quality was absolutely exceptional. He was fast, and his finishing with his left foot was a real weapon. Mo has outstanding game intelligence, and his instinct for situations is highly developed. It was obvious that he was the type of player who can decide a match single-handedly, in a moment.
‘One of his greatest strengths, however, is his ability to learn quickly, which enabled him to reach new levels in a very short time. Over the course of his career, he has continuously improved – and that is what allowed him to build a world-class career.’
Salah’s standout games came in Europe. Basel were in the Europa League in 2012-13 and went deep into the competition. They knocked out Tottenham in the quarter-finals, where Salah notably outpaced Kyle Walker and scored in the home leg to set-up a last-four clash against Chelsea.
It was not just his on-pitch ability that made him a superstar in the making. ‘Mo is a very intelligent, introverted and curious person,’ adds Vogel. ‘He has a very clear vision of how he wants to shape his life and his career, which has always impressed me. He gives a team a great deal of energy – not only on the pitch but also off it.
‘His positive presence is contagious and uplifting. When you look at Mo’s face, you are met with a smile that is impossible to resist… it’s like a form of legal doping!’
Basel came up short against Chelsea in the semi-final despite a Salah goal at Stamford Bridge but he did enough to catch the eye of their executives. The following January, after two more goals in a pair of Basel wins over Chelsea in the Champions League group stage, the Blues swooped ahead of Liverpool, who had been keeping an eye on him for some time.
Chelsea’s executives were wowed by Salah after he scored int he Europa League semi-final second leg at Stamford Bridge
Salah struck again at his future home in September 2013 as Basel pulled off a shock Champions League away win at Chelsea
And two months later he repeated the trick in Switzerland in a 1-0 victory over Jose Mourinho’s side. In January he would join Chelsea for £11million, snatched from under Liverpool’s noses
His agent at the time, Sascha Empacher, blamed Reds chief Ian Ayre for their failure to get the deal over the line, saying: ‘The guys in Liverpool never understood that football transfers are very complex.’ Ayre also missed out on Dnipro winger Yevhen Konoplyanka around this time.
Just as it is necessary to trace his steps from Nagrig to fully appreciate how Salah defied the odds, it is also worth revisiting his time at Chelsea to understand the way in which the Egyptian got over an almighty setback.
Jose Mourinho was manager and he branded Salah a ‘young kid’. He said: ‘Physically he was not ready. Mentally he was not ready. Socially and culturally he was lost and everything was tough for him.’
He did not impress the manager, clearly, but the squad liked him. In fact, Filipe Luis, the left back signed from Atletico Madrid, said he was ‘like Lionel Messi in training’. Mourinho demanded structure whereas Salah offered unpredictable chaos.
‘Oh man, how can I describe it to you?’ recalls Mahmoud. ‘Everyone in Egypt, including myself, was mesmerised by that transfer. I remember people going to cafes to watch their matches.
‘There was a sarcastic comment that practically all Egyptians, myself included, used to write on Chelsea’s social media accounts: “Take Hazard out and bring Salah in, Mourinho!” Waiting for him to play… unfortunately, he didn’t, but I believed he would come back stronger.’
Liverpool, though, were watching from afar and saw Salah’s time at Chelsea as a failure. Not a failure on behalf of the player, but a failure on behalf of Mourinho to get the best out of him and give him the belief to thrive.
Salah ended up going on loan to Fiorentina, wearing No 74 in tribute to the number of people who died in the Port Said disaster, and transformed the club as one of the greatest mid-season signings in Serie A history.
He struggled to make a major impact under Mourinho and was largely held back behind Eden Hazard
Salah wore the No 74 shirt on loan at Fiorentina in 2015, where he was one of the great mid-season signings to turn around La Viola’s form
For this reason, his summer move to Roma was greeted with huge fanfare and he was given a hero’s welcome at the airport.
‘He is the best player I have coached in my career,’ said then Roma boss Luciano Spalletti, now at Juventus – a club that would like to sign Salah this summer, however unlikely that might be financially.
For what it’s worth, Spalletti is also the coach Salah has named as the most influential in his career – not Jurgen Klopp or Arne Slot, the two bosses he has won trophies under at Liverpool.
‘I improved so much with him. Technically and mentally,’ he said in 2025. ‘He gave me the chance to express my talent and improve as a player.’
Salah also believes Spalletti improved him defensively and, if he had worked with the Italian before he moved to Chelsea, he would have taken his chance in west London. In a short time in Rome, the Egyptian felt he developed from a prospect to a genuine star.
In later chapters of this five-part story, running all week on DailyMail+, we will hear some of the methods the forward followed in Rome – with bits taken from Olympian Michael Phelps and a personal finishing coach who we will speak to – that made him stand out from the crowd and become a super-human athlete.
Despite his on-pitch exploits in the Eternal City, Liverpool stole a march on rivals with their data-led approach. Dr Ian Graham, author of the excellent book How To Win The Premier League, was Liverpool’s director of research at the time.
One thing he devised was a metric that he believed allowed him to see the invisible side of football: ‘goal probability added’.
In a short time in Rome, the Egyptian felt he developed from a prospect to a genuine star
He describes it as a ‘currency’ that asks what the team’s chance of scoring a goal was before and after a player’s action. For example, how likely were Liverpool to score a goal either side of a defence-splitting pass from Salah. Graham found Salah was outperforming many of his peers yet had a much lower price-tag than them. He found that even when he was not finding the back of the net, he was getting in the right positions but being let down by his team-mates.
Paul Goldrick, a scout for Liverpool who has also worked for Manchester United and Aston Villa, first spotted Salah in 2012 playing for Basel, when Liverpool were originally keen.
A few years later, Goldrick never explicitly told anyone at games that he was interested in Salah, but had conversations about him and knew Roma needed to sell to comply with financial rules. Monchi, Roma’s transfer chief, met Liverpool in a legal office in Milan to avoid being pictured.
While the Anfield hierarchy were raving about Salah, the rest of the Premier League remained sceptical because of his perceived failure at Chelsea. Insiders at Liverpool couldn’t believe there was so little competition for his signature. After all, Salah had managed 0.90 goal contributions per game in his final season in Italy. Klopp originally wanted Borussia Dortmund winger Julian Brandt instead but the transfer committee were in his ear: ‘Come on, come on, Mo Salah, he is the solution!’
It is fair to say they have been proved right. Salah’s bumpy journey along the rickety roads from Nagrig to Cairo had led him to the Premier League for a second crack at the whip and, just as the Reds’ transfer gurus reckoned, he was indeed the solution…
COMING TOMORROW: Read part two of The Salah Files – how Liverpool turned the ‘Chelsea reject’ into a record-breaking Egyptian King
