Few stories this season have generated as many column inches as Mohamed Salah’s will-he-won’t-he contract stand-off with Liverpool and his ultimate paymasters, Fenway Sport Group
You need thick skin to own a football club – and FSG’s is rhinoceros hide – but even they will have been influenced by the noise from Liverpool fans, clamour among pundits, and banners in the Anfield stands
Mohamed Salah’s performances in 2024-25, even by his dizzyingly high standards, have been electric. Has there ever been a better pitch for a new contract, on whatever terms you like, than the last seven months
And while their last two defeats against Paris Saint Germain and Newcastle United mean it won’t be a double or a treble this season, the Egyptian King will have a second Premier League winners medal soon.
The hope among Liverpool fans is that isn’t a goodbye present. As it stands, however, the mood music around Salah’s contract situation is – cautiously – positive
Virgil van Dijk is in the same optimistic bracket, though it appears Trent Alexander-Arnold has his heart set on the latest Galactico in a Real Madrid side packed to the rafters with superstars
But it remains to be seen how the situation with the trio will ultimately shake out – and FSG will be preparing to present Arne Slot with plans for every possible contingency.
Losing Salah, however, would be a blow on a variety of different levels besides losing his generation talent on the pitch. Commercially, the 32-year-old is comfortably the Reds’ biggest asset.
The universal consensus among experts TBR Football speaks to is that Salah’s personal brand is the most impactful in the Premier League, and perhaps of any player still active at the elite level.
Privately, outside his Liverpool duties, he has partnered with some of the world’s biggest brands: Visa, Adidas, Pepsi, Gucci, Uber, Vodafone and more.
In Salah’s last round of negotiations with Liverpool in 2022, his agent and friend, Ramy Abbas Issa, revealed that he earns as much from his personal endorsements as he does from his deal at Anfield.
Since then, it’s likely that the scales have actually tipped in favour of his non-Liverpool income, which includes both his fixed (base contract) and variable pay (bonuses)
For context, Salah is believed to earn a basic £350,000 per week, equating to just over £18m annually, which was about five per cent of Liverpool’s total wage bill of £387m for 2023-24
But that is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to figuring out how much a global superstar like Salah really earns.
Thankfully for those curious, we should have some new, verified information within the next seven days
Mohamed Salah set to reveal commercial earnings amid Liverpool contract talks
Salah’s commercial empire – his collection of investments, his commercial partnerships and so on – is most lucrative in the Arab world, where his superstardom has given him huge leverage with sponsors
But he has an ever growing an extremely money-spinning portfolio in the UK too, of which some of the details are available on Companies House.
In the last recorded financial year, the vehicle Salah has set up to manage his commercial business had £25m on the balance sheet, up by almost £6m the previous year.
His representatives are due to file the company’s accounts before next Monday, 31 March. After that, we will be able to see how much the forward earned in the last financial year.
His last set of accounts showed that the company made £11m of new investments in 2022-23, had £14m cash in the bank, and was due to receive £8m from third parties in the next 12 months