This isn't how it was supposed to end.
Mohamed Salah, one of the best players Liverpool has ever put in the red shirt, left as a free agent and signed for Trabzonspor. He wasn't sold for a fee that reflected what he gave the club. He didn't walk off the Anfield pitch to a standing ovation with a guard of honor. He left for nothing, to Turkey, wearing the number 61, after a fallout so ugly it needed no translation.
And the part that should sting at Anfield is that it didn't have to be like this.
The bitter part
Before the goodbye, there was the rant. Salah went public with the feeling that Liverpool had cut him loose, saying it seemed like the club had thrown him under the bus. He made clear he had no relationship left with then-manager Arne Slot. This wasn't a coded comment in a mixed zone. It was a superstar torching the bridge on his way out, in full view.
Jamie Carragher, a Liverpool great who doesn't hand out criticism of his old club lightly, called Salah "a disgrace" for the outburst. The comparisons to Cristiano Ronaldo's scorched-earth exit from Manchester United came fast, and they fit. Two enormous figures, two clubs that lost control of the ending. Both turned a legend into a talking point instead of a tribute.
Here's the twist that makes it all look worse: Salah aired his grievances about Slot, and then Liverpool sacked Slot anyway, a year after he'd won the Premier League, following a fifth-place finish. So the manager Salah couldn't get along with is gone. Salah is gone too. Nobody won. The club just managed to lose both the coach and the icon in the same messy stretch.
The avoidable part
Every great player gets old. That's not a scandal, it's a calendar. What separates well-run clubs from the rest is how they handle the last chapter, because there's always a last chapter, and the aging superstar always thinks it hasn't arrived yet. That tension is normal. Managing it with grace is the job.
Liverpool didn't manage it. Whatever the internal truth of who was right about Salah's role, the outcome is a public feud, a free transfer, and a legend who feels betrayed. A club that could have sold the story of its greatest attacker's send-off on its own terms instead let resentment write it.
Contrast that with what clubs are supposed to do: reward the service, control the story, and get some dignity out of the exit. Liverpool got neither. A player of Salah's stature walking for free tells you the relationship broke down so badly that a clean, well-timed sale was never on the table.
The Trabzonspor part
So now he's in Turkey. Reports put his Trabzonspor deal in the region of a €17 million annual salary, and the move only came together after a Besiktas deal fell apart over a shirt-sales clause that Trabzonspor were willing to accept. He picked the number 61. He told Trabzonspor fans "see you very soon" as the deal closed, and they greeted him like the star he still is.
