Mohamed Salah

Mohamed Salah Hamed Mahrous Ghaly (born 15 June 1992) is an Egyptian professional footballer who plays as a right winger for Süper Lig club Trabzonspor and captains the Egypt national team. ^{1 2} He is widely regarded as one of the best players of his generation and one of the greatest African players of all time, is dubbed the "Egyptian King", and is the all-time top foreign goalscorer in the Premier League and the all-time top African goalscorer in the UEFA Champions League. ¹ This record is the footballer; he is not the Tunisian scholar Mohamed Salah Ben Mrad, who has his own record in the museum. ²

Salah was born in Nagrig, Basyoun, in Egypt's Gharbia Governorate. ^{1 2} He played for the youth setups of local teams Ittihad Basyoun and Othmason Tanta before joining Al-Mokawloon's youth team in 2006, aged fourteen, after being spotted by a scout who had come to watch another child. ¹ He frequently missed school for the three-hour journey to training, and at fifteen first-team manager Mohamed Radwan moved him straight into the first-team squad, with a special diet and training programme because his muscles were not yet fully formed. ¹ He made his first-team debut on 3 May 2010 against El Mansoura and scored his first goal on 25 December 2010 against Al Ahly, in a 1–1 draw. ¹ After the Port Said Stadium riot of 1 February 2012 the Egyptian Premier League was suspended and the rest of the season cancelled, opening the way to his move to Europe. ¹

Basel had monitored Salah for some time; after the league suspension the Swiss club arranged a friendly with the Egypt under-23 team in which Salah scored twice in the second half, invited him for a week's training, and on 10 April 2012 announced his signing on a four-year contract starting 15 June 2012. ¹ He won two Swiss Super League titles with Basel, scored against Chelsea in both the Europa League and the Champions League, and finished his time there with 79 games and 20 goals in all competitions. ¹ His conduct in the 2013 ties against Maccabi Tel Aviv caused major controversy, after he appeared to deliberately avoid shaking hands with the Israeli club's players in both legs. ¹

In January 2014 he joined Chelsea for a fee reported to be in the region of £11 million, the first Egyptian to sign for the London club, but limited game time led to successive loans. ¹ A threat of compulsory military service, after his registration in an education scheme was rescinded, was lifted after a meeting with Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab, the Minister of Higher Education and the national team manager Shawky Gharieb. ¹ On loan at Fiorentina from February 2015 he chose the number 74 shirt in honour of the victims of the Port Said Stadium riot and scored both goals in a Coppa Italia semi-final win at Juventus, then refused a permanent move and joined Roma, who signed him permanently for €15 million. ¹

In 2017 Salah moved to Liverpool for £36.9 million, a club record at the time; the Arabic article reports the deal as €42 million plus €8 million in add-ons. ^{1 2} In his first season he set the record for Premier League goals in a 38-game season (32) and helped Liverpool to the 2018 Champions League final; forming a formidable attacking trio with Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané, he was integral to the club's Champions League and Premier League title successes in the following two seasons, and later also won the FA Cup, EFL Cup, FA Community Shield, UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup. ¹ In 2023 he became Liverpool's all-time top Premier League goalscorer and the fifth player to score 200 goals for the club, and in 2025 the club's third-highest goalscorer in its history, behind Roger Hunt and Ian Rush. ¹ In 2024–25 he won a second league title while breaking the record for goal contributions in a 38-game Premier League campaign, and won the PFA Players' Player of the Year award for a record-breaking third time. ¹ His Liverpool league totals were 315 appearances and 191 goals, and he won four Premier League Golden Boots. ^{1 2} In March 2026 he announced he would leave Liverpool at the end of the 2025–26 season, and he then joined Trabzonspor in Türkiye, scoring eight goals in his first eight league matches there as of 19 October 2026 by the article's statistics. ¹

Salah represented Egypt at youth level, played at the 2012 Summer Olympics and was named CAF Most Promising African Talent of that year; his senior debut came in 2011. ¹ He finished runner-up at the 2017 and 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, was joint top scorer in the African qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup with six goals, and drove Egypt's qualification for the 2018 World Cup — its first since 1990 — scoring both goals in the 2–1 win over Congo that sealed it. ^{1 2} He was named CAF African Footballer of the Year in 2017 and 2018, and BBC African Footballer of the Year in the same years. ¹ As captain he led Egypt at the 2026 World Cup to its first-ever match victories in the competition and its first appearance in the round of 16; his international record stood at 122 caps and 68 goals as of 25 September 2026. ¹

Salah married Magi in 2013; their daughter Makka, born in 2014, is named in honour of the holy city of Mecca, their second daughter Kayan was born in 2020, and their son Leil in September 2026. ¹ Salah is Muslim and celebrates goals by performing the sujud; he told CNN of the celebration: "It's something like praying or thanking God for what I have received, but yeah, it's just praying and praying for a win. I've always done that since I was young, everywhere." ¹ He is active in regeneration projects in Nagrig, his hometown where most people live in poverty, donating to help build a school and a hospital, a project that includes an Al-Azhar institute and an ambulance unit; his father told Al-Masry Al-Youm that his son refused to accept any financial assistance with the project. ¹ He has helped more than 450 families with monthly allowances and gave approximately $300,000 to the government when the country was in economic crisis, and he donated three million Egyptian pounds after the 2022 Abu Sefein Church fire in Giza, in which 41 people died. ¹ When his family was once robbed in Egypt and the thief was caught, Salah persuaded his father to drop the charges, then helped the thief financially and tried to find him a job. ¹

This section sets out positions as the sources report them, attributed to their holders; it is not a verdict by the museum. Some journalists hold that Salah has been disrespected by Ballon d'Or rankings — seventh in 2021, not nominated in 2024, fourth in 2025 — and Peter Bolster of This Is Anfield attributed the pattern in 2025 to an Orientalist lens, anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia, while after the 2025 award several fans suggested that Salah's support for Palestine during the Gaza war had damaged his chances. ¹ During the Gaza war Salah called for humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Gaza Strip and for the massacres and the slaughter of innocent civilians to stop, donated an undisclosed amount to support the Palestinian people, and in August 2025 criticized UEFA's tribute post for the Palestinian footballer Suleiman Obeid for failing to discuss the circumstances of his death. ¹ His yearly Christmas-season family photos, posted since December 2019, have elicited mixed reactions on social media each year. ¹ In 2018 he said he was "insulted" after his image was displayed across the national team's plane without his permission before the World Cup, the team's official sponsor being a rival of his own sponsor. ¹ On the other side, the Liverpool supporters' "Egyptian King" chant, which Salah has approved, has been cited as an example of inclusivity, and a 2021 study in the American Political Science Review found that his transfer to Liverpool led to a 16% reduction in hate crimes in the city and reduced Islamophobic online rhetoric by Liverpool fans. ¹ As to his school of Islam, the English article documents that he is Muslim and the Arabic article's infobox gives his religion as Muslim; neither names a school, and public practice is not a school attestation, so the value in his data remains unknown. ^{1 2}

Salah is regarded as a symbol of national pride in Egypt, where he has been called the "Fourth Pyramid", and Time magazine named him among its 100 most influential people in 2019, with his entry written by John Oliver. ¹ In his Time 100 entry Salah, an advocate of women's equality in the Middle East, stated: "We need to change the way we treat women in our culture." ¹ During the 2018 Egyptian presidential election, a large number of spoilt ballot papers — possibly more than a million — had both candidates' names crossed out and Salah's written in instead. ¹ The press and his fans also nickname him "The Pharaoh", and he won the FIFA Puskás Award for his goal in the Merseyside derby. ¹

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.