Mohamed Salah's Future at Liverpool: A Crossroads with Arne Slot
Mohamed Salah’s Liverpool future, once painted as settled and over, has been dragged back into the spotlight – and this time it comes with conditions attached.
The 2025/26 season has turned sour at Anfield. A year that was supposed to be a defence of Liverpool’s 20th league title has instead become a long, painful unravelling. Performances have dipped, belief has drained, and the team that once tore opponents apart now looks a shadow of itself.
Salah has not escaped the fallout. Neither has Arne Slot.
The Egyptian, usually Liverpool’s relentless standard-bearer, has seen his form collapse along with much of the squad’s. Slot, meanwhile, has been hammered for cautious, uninspiring football and a run of results that has stripped away the aura built under previous regimes. The tension between the club’s talisman and its head coach has not been subtle.
There have been flashpoints. Salah reacted badly after slipping down the pecking order, a situation that eventually preceded confirmation he would leave on a free transfer this summer, despite still having a year left on his contract. Over the weekend, he went a step further, openly criticising Slot’s approach and calling for a return to “heavy metal attacking football” – a pointed nod to the high-octane style that once defined Liverpool.
All sides had broadly accepted the outcome: a clean break in the summer, Salah moving on, Liverpool reshaping under Slot and the current hierarchy. That was the story.
Now the plot has twisted.
According to The Athletic, Salah has shown a willingness to reverse course – but only if there is a sweeping change of regime at Anfield. As the report outlines, figures close to him in Egypt have been suggesting he has not completely shut the door on staying, despite recent announcements about his departure.
The price of that U-turn would be high. The report states that a “regime change” would be required, beginning with Slot and extending to the directors who back him and whose own contracts also run down in a year. In other words: if the current football structure remains, Salah goes. If it is dismantled, he could be persuaded to stay.
It is a stark equation for owners FSG and the Liverpool board. Keep faith with the coach and the project, or rip it up to cling to one of the greatest players in the club’s modern history.
Complicating matters further are conflicting signals over Slot’s position. On Monday, a report from TEAMtalk suggested FSG themselves had undergone a rethink, with Salah’s public outburst after Friday’s defeat to Aston Villa said to have “triggered” internal discussions and prompted four possible replacements for Slot to be considered.
Yet transfer specialist Fabrizio Romano painted a very different picture. Speaking on his YouTube channel, he insisted that the owners still back their man.
“They want to support Arne Slot, believe in Arne Slot,” Romano said, while acknowledging the brutal reality of this campaign: 20 defeats, poor football, and a season that has felt relentlessly negative for everyone associated with Liverpool.
He stressed that, up to the weekend just gone, Liverpool had not made contact with any alternative coach – not Xabi Alonso, not anyone. The message from inside the club, according to Romano, remains that they believe in Slot and have not picked up the phone to a successor.
So Liverpool stand at a crossroads with two of their most influential figures pulling in opposite directions. Salah, the icon who helped drag the club to titles at home and in Europe, is prepared to stay only if the current leadership is swept aside. Slot, the man FSG chose to steer the post-title era, still enjoys the backing of owners who insist they have not even sounded out a replacement.
Something will have to give. And when it does, it will say everything about what – and who – Liverpool value most in the next chapter of their story.
