Breaking one of football’s unwritten rules, Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has lavished praise on Mo Salah and likened him to Lionel Messi.
Rummenigge’s compliments for the Liverpool talisman are unlikely to go down well at Anfield, and with Jurgen Klopp in particular, who did not appear to don his customary cool demeanour after the weekend’s unceremonious 4-1drubbing by a well-oiled, slick Manchester City.
The ebullient Egypt star’s future has been in the spotlight recently with his deal at Anfield up in June 2023. And now the Bayern chief’s comments are bound to ruffle quite a few feathers at Kirkby.
Salah rebuilt his rebuilt his reputation in Serie A in the wake of a miserable spell at Chelsea. He then signed for Liverpool in the summer of 2017 for a fee of £36.5m which has clearly proven to be a masterstroke.
The 28-year-old blasted a bewildering 44 goals in his first season with the Reds and has since gone on to help the club lift the Champions League and Premier League trophies, bagging116 goals in 184 games for the club.
Although, like the rest of his team-mate, his form has slowed somewhat this term, he has still found the net 22 times from 32 appearances in all competitions.
And that achievement has still got his admirers purring with Rummenigge exuberantly piling the praise on the forward, before stopping short of saying he is a target for the German champions.
“In my opinion, Salah is the Messi of Africa, and of course he got the skills to play in the best teams in the world,” Rumminegge told ON Time Sports via Kingfut.
“What he [Salah] has achieved can be compared to what Messi and Ronaldo did with Barcelona and Real Madrid.
“At the moment we don’t plan on signing Salah, but certainly it would be an honour to have him.”
Salah made headlines in December when he made the admission that he could not rle out a move to Spain. Speculation in December had mentioned LaLiga’s big guns Real Madrid and Barcelona as having shown interest in the mercurial forward.
When questioned about his future last month, Salah told TV2 (via Sport Witness):
“I don’t know. If you ask me, I say I want to stay here as long as I can. But as I’ve said before, it’s in the club’s hands.
“I’m always going to give 100 percent until the last minute. I’m at this club and I want to win as many trophies as I can.
“And I want to give 100 percent to the people, who show me love all the time.”
Reds’ boss, Klopp, claimed the player was settled when asked for his take on Salah’s comments this month.
Klopp said: “I would think so, did you hear something different?
“How can you see the hunger to stay at Liverpool? It looks to me like he is really settled to be honest.
“I have no idea, actually, but you could ask me the same question for all the others and I have no idea. I didn’t think about it until [the press] asked me.
“As long as I don’t hear anything and I don’t ask the players what they think of next season or in two years, for me, it looks like [he will stay].
“How long is his contract? Long? I would [think so] yes, but I have no idea.”
Before Christmas, in an interview with AS (via The Metro), the Reds striker revealed he was “very disappointed” not to be handed the captaincy against FC Midtjylland.
Virgil van Dijk, Jordan Henderson and James Milner were all sidelined for the Champions League game. It meant Salah thought he would get the skipper’s armband.
However, he was overlooked and local-born star Trent Alexander-Arnold was made the captain.