The Egypt forward led Galatasaray a merry dance for 17 second-half minutes to Anfield’s delight
Welcome back, Mo. The old place has missed you. How many more of these are we going to get?
It would be incorrect to say this was Mohamed Salah’s night at Anfield. It was instead Mohamed Salah’s 17 second‑half minutes, although these were the decisive 17 minutes in this Champions League tie, and one of those interludes at this ground where a kind of voodoo descends, the night goes a little wonky and ghosts flicker at the edge of things.
In this case Anfield was treated to a glimpse, wind chimes tinkling, of Peak Salah, retro Mo, Salah the way we were. The key moment was a wonderful piece of skill to create and then finish Liverpool’s final goal in this 4-0 win. Salah took the ball on the right, played a one-two with Florian Wirtz, gilded by a saucy little bandy-legged flick into his path.
Salah knows the lines from that spot. He took one touch and curled a left-foot shot in a hard flat arc into the far corner, the ball hanging in the Anfield air just long enough, a lovely soft white orb against the green, before it finally zinged the net.
This was one of those bring‑the‑house‑down moments. Salah waved and kissed the turf. It felt coronational, but also shot through with a sense of last things and divvyings-up. There will be at least one more Champions League game here against Paris Saint‑Germain before the summer. But it probably won’t look much like this one.
Arne Slot’s team spent the whole first half applying blunt, smothering pressure to the Galatasaray goal. Liverpool had 15 shots, scored once, missed chances, half‑missed half‑chances. It felt like watching one of those viral drunken city centre Friday night brawls, all flailing arms, rushes of blood and woozy men falling over. A bodged headlock. A wild, tottering overhand right. Somebody tries a roundhouse and falls into a wheelie bin. Puffer‑coat guy is wrestling neck‑tattoo man under the pool table.
In the middle of which Salah was having a shocker. He missed a sitter right in front of goal with 20 minutes gone. Either side of which he looked like a man watching football happen around him, so much so you half expected to look down and notice he was carrying a pair of reading glasses and a bag of Cheetos.
Dominic Szoboszlai gave Liverpool the lead with a fine finish from a smart low corner. And on the stroke of half-time they had a penalty. Salah stepped up to settle the night, and instead missed horribly, producing a kick so weak and vague that Ugurcan Cakir had time to wait before kicking it away.
At the break it was tempting to wonder if this might turn into a painful night, another tick‑tock on the Slot clock. A lot is made of the power of the Anfield crowd. It’s a theatre. It’s a cauldron. It’s a theatre-cauldron. There is a sense of folksy mythology to this. But it’s also true. The energy is real. People basically just want to feel something.
This place can be a sporting disintegrator ray. But Slot has played the room poorly at times. Jürgen Klopp’s super‑strength was always his ability to take everyone on the same journey. A defeat still felt noble, an event where someone was in charge. Dad is here and he’s making a speech.
Slot seemed a little spiky when asked about the boos that greeted the draw with Tottenham on Sunday. But here he was up early on his touchline in his spring-range cropped jacket, that beautifully smooth pink head gleaming under the lights like a harvest moon.
Galatasaray came to spoil early on. For 20 minutes or so their only tactic seemed to be slowing things down, aided by sending on two burly middle-aged medical blokes whenever anyone fell over, characters who seemed fondly reminiscent of the generic brown‑coated caretaker duo in any BBC TV sitcom of the 1970s, both ideally played by Ronnie Barker.
This seemed to enrage Slot, understandably. He has changed his look, from smooth, round and twinkly, like the head of a prosperous regional chain of butchers, to something more trim and feisty, more divorced uncle on a stag do. Here he berated the officials constantly, at one point bounding the length of his chalk rectangle, whirling his arms like a Nu‑Metal frontman. Is this a good way to be?
Salah came to life after the break and changed the game. First he set up Hugo Ekitiké with a hard low cross. Then a powerful shot ended with Ryan Gravenberch bundling in the third. Salah went off looking like he might have picked up a niggle, departing to a warm, fond, elegiac ovation. And by the end this had become something of a tribute night for a player who did more than any other to dish up last season’s league title; and who gave his manager the gift of a little more time and space here.
