Mohamed Salah’s agent has been speaking about the striker’s protracted contract negotiations with Liverpool, which finally came to an end last summer.
The agent has apparently claimed that the Liverpool forward is now earning in excess of £1million per week.
Salah, 31, finally quashed months of speculation by putting pen-to-paper on a three-year deal in the summer of 2022. However, reaching an agreement was anything but straightforward.
There had been serious doubt over whether or not Salah would extend his stay at Anfield amid transfer interest from other clubs.
Negotiations were drawn out and full of setbacks which only served to fuel the speculation, even though Salah insisted publicly that he wanted to remain at the club.
Eventually, a resolution which suited all parties was found, understood to be in the region of £350k per week. However, fresh comments from Rammy Abbas, Salah’s advisor, have drawn fresh light on the saga.
Abbas and Salah have both contributed to a Harvard Business School study based around the forward’s protracted contract negotiations with Liverpool.
The study, which has been seen by The Guardian, sheds plenty of light on just how close Salah came to leaving Anfield.
At one point, Abbas – who along with Salah agreed to be quoted as though they were speaking at the time of the negotiations – claimed that talks had “broken down entirely” just weeks before a breakthrough was made.
He also made it clear that the sticking point in negotiations were substantial. Speaking just before he tabled a decisive counter-offer to Liverpool, he said:
“We are still very far apart. Mohamed isn’t going to throw away his contract because of a 5% difference in what we are asking for and what they are willing to give – it is much more than that.”
Salah’s advisor also outlined that his star client would bank more than £1m-a-week if Liverpool were to cede ground and meet the player’s financial demands.
While the study doesn’t outline exactly how much Salah’s new deal is worth, he is understood to be the club’s highest earner and it is implied that Liverpool agreed to the demands tabled by Abbas.
It was also outlined how Salah’s move to Liverpool back in 2015 and his subsequent evolution during his time at the club has helped him to land significant endorsements with the likes of Adidas, Pepsi and Gucci amongst others.
Abbas added: “If we find a way to get Liverpool to agree to the salary we have in mind and if Mohamed performs at a level he has achieved in the past seasons, we conservatively expect the total amount received by Mohamed and the image rights companies over the next few years from both his playing contract and his image rights contracts to be somewhere between £46.8m and £53.7m per year.”
Salah may have committed his future to Liverpool until the summer of 2025, but that hasn’t prevented suitors from making their interest in him known. Al-Ittihad saw a huge £150million bid for the forward rejected out of hand by Liverpool during the summer transfer window.
While it remains to be seen if Liverpool – or Salah – have the appetite to facilitate what would be a record deal, the Saudi Pro League outfit are expected to rekindle their interest in the Egypt international in the coming months.
