Atlanta (AFP) – San Diego FC’s billionaire owner Mohamed Mansour on Thursday said his Egyptian compatriot Mohamed Salah would be an “asset,” as speculation builds over the Liverpool forward’s next club. Superstar Salah announced this week he will leave Anfield at the end of the season after a glittering nine-year spell at Liverpool, where he has scored 255 goals and stands alongside the all-time greats.
While Saudi Arabia is thought to be the most likely destination, Salah could choose to follow the likes of Lionel Messi, Son Heung-min, and Antoine Griezmann to the United States’ burgeoning Major League Soccer. If he does, recent MLS expansion club San Diego FC — which reached the playoff semi-finals in its debut season last year — has been heavily linked with Salah, not least due to deep-pocketed British-Egyptian owner Mansour.
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“He’s probably one of the great players today. And any team that will get him, or any country that will get him, he will definitely be an asset,” Mansour told AFP Thursday, on the sidelines of the Business of Soccer summit in Atlanta. Mansour declined to answer whether he is actively trying to recruit Salah or has previously sounded out a move for the striker. But he added: “Of course Mo Salah is somebody that, as an Egyptian, my origin, I’m very proud of. He is somebody that reached the world stage as one of the great players.”
“And I think he will, if he does decide… wherever he will go, he will add a lot to that league and to that country and to that team for sure. So he’s somebody I’m very proud of.” Salah won two Premier League titles along with a Champions League and other silverware with Liverpool, as well as a record-equaling four Golden Boot awards. He was the poster boy of Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool revolution at Anfield, propelling the team back to the summit of English and European football, and is undoubtedly the greatest ever player to emerge from Egypt, or arguably Africa.
Mansour told a panel discussion that the whole of Egypt comes to a halt whenever Salah plays, and named the forward as his favorite footballer of all time. Salah has endured an uncharacteristically difficult season at Liverpool, scoring just five league goals, and telling reporters in December that he had been “thrown under the bus” by the club after a dramatic dip in form meant he was benched.
– ‘Opportunity’ – While effusive in his praise for Salah, Mansour insisted that footballing recruitment decisions are left to San Diego FC’s sports director and coach. “I let the people in charge” decide, he told AFP. “I just say, ‘I got this opportunity. My belief is so. You guys make the decision. Come back to me.’ If you say, ‘No, he’s not (a) fit,’ whoever it is, in whichever sector, then that’s it.”
That philosophy has paid dividends so far. San Diego FC became MLS’s 30th club last season, after Mansour partnered with the Native American Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation to pay a $500 million expansion fee. In the franchise’s first season, it broke the record for the most points by an expansion team, with 60, and currently sits fourth and undefeated in the Western Conference. One of the youngest squads in the MLS, San Diego FC draws from the Right to Dream global academy network run by Mansour, which has operations in Ghana, Egypt, and Denmark. Tottenham and Ghana winger Mohammed Kudus is among the network’s alumni.
“What I like about our style of play is it’s a team effort, it’s resilience, it’s energy, it’s the winning spirit,” said Mansour. “Soccer, football, is a team sport. It’s not a ‘one person.'”
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