Everyone Loses In The Liverpool-Mo Salah Clash

Of all of the ways Liverpool's no-good season could have gotten worse, I don't know if anyone expected this. On Saturday, after the Pool Boys blew both a 2-0 and a 3-2 lead to freakin' Leeds United, Mohamed Salah, who had been benched for three straight matches, fanned the flames of this tire fire in a postgame interview. He said that his relationship with Liverpool manager Arne Slot had evaporated, that the club broke some unnamed promises to him from the summer, and that Liverpool "has thrown me under the bus." For the often elusive Salah, this was as clear a declaration that something is rotten in Anfield as he was ever going to give.

The fallout has been predictably uproarious. When a star player feuds this openly with the club where he made his legend, it is never pretty. Reports are flying left and right, as everyone pounces on every bit of information that leaks out of the club. The players are all behind Salah! The club supports Slot! Dominik Szoboszlai is tweeting angrily at random Hungarian journalists! On Monday, Slot gave a press conference tried to quell the flames to predictable futility, and now it seems like a divorce for Salah and Liverpool is more likely than not. Salah is not playing in the Champions League this week, and he might never don a Liverpool jersey again. He'll be off to the Africa Cup of Nations with Egypt soon, and he might never return to the club. For its part, Liverpool has to either figure out how to get Salah back in the mix or figure out how to get rid of him and move on from the most successful era it has had this millennium. Slot might still be fired, too.