How long can Mohamed Salah stay on top?

Liverpool will probably be a bit disappointed with Wednesday night’s 2-2 draw against Aston Villa, but once again they can have no complaints about Mohamed Salah’s performance. He added a goal and an assist to his impressive tallies, and he’s pretty clearly been the best player in the Premier League this season.

Salah’s 24 goals leads the league, and 17 non-penalty goals is 2nd behind Erling Haaland. His 15 assists also lead the league, and by a wide margin — Antonee Robinson and Bukayo Saka are tied for 2nd with 10.

Yes, Salah is overperforming his xG by a lot, and his teammates are helping him overperform his xA by a lot too. But this dude is still just an outrageously high value shooter and passer, and he’d still be in contention with Saka and Cole Palmer for player of the season if he was performing exactly at those xG + xA numbers. He’s turning in one of the best seasons of his career at age 32.

Yesterday, in a piece about Manchester City, I noted that neither Omar Marmoush or Phil Foden is a threat to shoot from the half-space inside the box, and it hurts City’s attack a lot. Here is the literal opposite of that. All Salah does is get shots off from that zone, every single game.

And the key passes map is just beautiful. Look at how many passes set up shots from central areas inside the box. This is god mode shit.

But Salah, notably, does not have a contract for next season. Depending on which reporting you’d like to believe, the hang-up could be more about his salary demands or the number of years he’s asking for. In any event, negotiations are ongoing, with neither side budging yet on their biggest demands.

This has been the subject of considerable debate among the Premier League’s pundit class, with Paul Scholes and Jamie Carragher getting into it on television the other night. They made some points that I thought were interesting to investigate.

It’s true that we’re seeing legendary players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi continue to make positive contributions to professional teams well into their late 30s, and in Ronaldo’s case, at age 40. I’m willing to entertain the idea that advancements in medicine, sports science, and nutrition will lead to players who have access to the best resources having longer careers. I’d also argue that Ronaldo is a genetic freak and not normal.

But while it’s impressive that Ronaldo and Messi are still very good professional players, they are no longer of the quality that they could help Liverpool compete for the Premier League and Champions League trophies. There’s a reason they now play in Saudi Arabia and the United States, respectively. They declined much deeper into their careers than any of their peers, but they still undeniably did decline, and they did so around the age Salah is now.

When Liverpool are deciding how many years they’re willing to give Salah on a new contract, they’re not thinking about whether or not he can maintain a professional standard until he’s 40. They’re thinking about how long he can be one of the best players in the world. I don’t doubt that Salah can be an average Premier League starter/above average bench player at age 37, but Liverpool don’t want to be paying £20m+ a season for that.

I spun up a quick look at players I’d consider to be Salah’s peers. They’re attackers who were recently the best player in the Premier League or won a Ballon d’Or, and had long careers with no really severe injuries. For the purposes of this exercise, “age they became washed” is the last season of their peak, when they were probably no longer in conversation for world best XI. Some of them did continue to contribute at a high level after that (Messi, Raúl), others fell off a cliff (Rooney, Agüero). Pro games played is just club and doesn’t count international caps; they were all in the 100 range.

One player I didn’t include here because he’s still playing at a high level for a Champions League contender is Robert Lewandowski (h/t podcast co-host Hayden Van Brewer for suggesting this), and he’s a great example of an optimistic scenario for Salah’s “decline.” Lewandowski hasn’t duplicated his best Bayern seasons in a Barcelona shirt and there are certainly times when his lack of pressing ability hurts Barca, but he’s still a top 5 center forward in the world, an astonishing 876 games into his professional career.

If I worked at Liverpool, I wouldn’t hesitate to give Salah a two-year contract at a massive wage, but I understand their hesitation to offer him a longer deal than that. Especially given that they have access to physical data that the public does not, as well as an 8-year trend to analyze, since he’s been at the club for so long.

I disagree with Scholes and Carragher that Salah is likely to remain a positive contributor to Liverpool who’s worth being the club’s highest earner until age 37 — there is simply no precedent for this.

My uneducated guess, as someone who is not a fitness trainer or physiotherapist that has worked with Salah directly, is that he has one more season as the best version of himself before he enters some variety of decline. I sincerely hope it is the Lewandowski or Messi version, rather than the Agüero version.

But whatever happens with Salah’s contract and his career going forward, I really hope he stays on a top team in Europe. I just want to keep seeing the dude play against the best competition, he’s an absolute joy to watch. If I’m wrong about his decline coming up soon, and he’s a star into his 40s, I’ll be beyond thrilled to be wrong.

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