A football finance expert believes Liverpool will have the headroom potentially to spend another £450m on new players this summer after Mohamed Salah leaves the club.
And Salah, who last night announced that he would call time on his decorated nine-year stay at Liverpool come the end of the current campaign, is being tipped to become a £1bn footballer if he makes the move to Saudi Arabia.
Where the Egyptian superstar goes next remains unclear. But the Reds know they must find a replacement for the third highest goalscorer in Anfield history after reaching an agreement over the final 12 months of the two-year contract extension he signed only in April 2025.
It has been widely reported that Salah, who has scored 255 goals in 435 appearances for Liverpool since his £34.3m move from Roma in June 2017, will leave the club on a free transfer.
So while the Reds will not receive a fee for a player who was the subject of a £150m offer from Al-Ittihad in September 2023, they will remove his wages, which are believed to be worth more than £400,000 a week, off the books.
And Rob Wilson, Professor of Applied Sport Finance at University Campus of Football Business in London, said: "Extracting any meaningful transfer fee while also removing the highest-earner off their wage bill just wasn’t realistic so terminating his contract makes financial sense.
"From Liverpool's perspective, the economics are really quite clear, even if, emotionally, particularly for the fans, it probably feels like the end of an era.
"Salah's been one of the most commercially impactful players in the club's modern history but I think we're at a point now where his on-the-pitch contribution, age profile and wage level has really diverged from an optimal position in terms of squad efficiency.
"I think Liverpool really should have cashed in when he was at peak value before providing him with a very lucrative contract and what we're seeing now is an outcome of that big decision, tying him to excessive wages at a time when his physical prowess will naturally diminish.
"From what I'm seeing there will be no transfer fee. It’s a termination of contract. What that means is that they remove one of the highest salary commitments that they've got on their books and from a pure financial modelling standpoint it is a positive outcome.
"It frees up some PSR space and so on, so what you're really doing is recycling capital to free up wages, create that headroom and enable you to reinvest into younger assets with more longer-term resale value.
"Naturally there is of course a commercial trade-off. Salah has been central to Liverpool's global brand, and particularly their digital footprint, and their branding exercise in the Middle East and Africa, so his departure will probably create a short term dip in engagement metrics.
"Things like shirt sales, digital reach and sponsorship activation in those territories which means, when coupled with Liverpool's rather patchy season that they've had in the Premier League, it is likely to damage their market share in those territories, although they are naturally a very historical brand.
"To counteract that, we probably should say that Liverpool's commercial models are much more mature and diversified than many other clubs in the Premier League. They're already less dependent on a single individual than they might have been five years ago.
"The key will not be how quickly they can replace Salah’s output but how quickly they can change the narrative. Football brands are built on storytelling as much as they are on performance."
Mohamed Salah will leave Liverpool at the end of the season and Fanatics has cut the price of this season's kits with 'M. Salah 11' printing.
The Reds spent close to £450m last summer as they reshaped their Premier League title-winning squad with the £116m and £79m arrivals of Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike respectively being followed by the £125m British record transfer purchase of Alexander Isak.
However their title defence has faltered badly and they have headed into the international break a huge 21 points behind leaders Arsenal.
There have been mitigating factors behind Liverpool's drop off domestically with one being the decline in Salah, who has only managed to score 10 goals across 34 games in all competitions.
But the 33-year-old is still expected to be heavily in demand after establishing himself as one of the finest players in the world.
Salah's agent, Ramy Abbas-Issa, said on Tuesday that "we do not know where Mohamed will play next season."
But his high-profile client has continuously been linked to the Saudi Pro League and Wilson believes a move there offers Salah the opportunity to become even bigger and richer than Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
"This is a pivotal moment not only for Mohamed Salah the football player but also Mohamed Salah the global brand," Wilson told BettingLounge.
"It’s widely expected that he will finally make the move to the Saudi Pro League, and I think that would be more than just a late career move to cash in.
"It's potentially the most strategically significant commercial decision that we've seen from any modern day football player. It would put Salah on a very realistic trajectory to potentially even surpass both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in terms of career earnings and as a brand become a £1billion athlete in his own right.
"The reason for this is less to do with Salah’s performances and more about his alignment with the cultural capital across the Middle East, North Africa and the broader EMEA region where he is utterly unmatched by anybody else in sport.
"Salah doesn’t just sell shirts, he represents identity, values, faiths and aspirations to hundreds of millions of people throughout that region and if you place Salah into the Saudi Pro League ecosystem, which has clearly been engineered as a geopolitical project, the upside is enormous.
"We're not just talking about a standard contract when it comes to Mohamed Salah to Saudi Arabia. We're talking about something that would be fully integrated in terms of its commercial appeal and its platform. That’s salary, his image rights, his ambassadorial roles and sovereign partnerships. Very similar to what we saw with Ronaldo but on another scale.
"I'd estimate a total deal structure including wages, bonuses and commercial activations approaching the £1billion mark over five to seven years if he can keep going until he is 40, as has been the case with Ronaldo.
"This would be structured even more aggressively than Ronaldo's move so that Salah would probably go on to ultimately exceed £1billion in lifetime earnings during this period, and that's really before we even start thinking about his post-playing opportunities.
"Salah may not be paid as highly as Ronaldo initially in terms of basic wages but he would likely become a long-term, global ambassador for Saudi Arabia’s broader economic and cultural strategy, particularly with the lead up to the World Cup in 2034.
"Given the alignment and geopolitical aspects, Salah would likely surpass Ronaldo’s annual earnings before the age of 40, leading to annual earnings in excess of £250m a year."
