Another goal and two assists for Mo Salah prompted former Liverpool striker Michael Owen to break into a two-minute monologue to praise and explain what sets the Egyptian apart.
Owen is a divisive figure among Liverpool supporters, with most taking a neutral view at best on the ex-player who moved to Real Madrid and latterly Man United.
As 2001’s Ballon d’Or winner, though, Owen is one of the few who can relate to just how good Salah is.
While Owen admitted his consistency didn’t last as long as Salah, he did attempt to explain why the No. 11 is still such an influential player at 32 years old.
For two minutes, the ex-Red spoke about Salah on the Premier League‘s world feed:
“The reason he’s like that is what’s between his ears.
“All the greats, all the champions, they are wired differently to the rest. People can all say, ‘I want to be the best player in the world, I want to score goals’.
“Of course you want to, course you want to, but some people just do it and have the mentality to do it and have that eye of the tiger to do it.
“Every single breath that they take, every single time they go to bed, every time they sit at the meal table, it’s an obsession.
“Whatever they’re doing, whatever they’re fuelling their body with, whatever rest they’re taking, whatever they do, they can’t do it without being obsessed with what’s next, when’s the next training session, how am I going to get better, when’s the next match, how am I going to recover to get fit for the next one?
“All of these things and he lives in the gym. He lives for breaking records, he lives for scoring goals and that feeling it gives him. He lives for winning things and everybody thinks they do.
“Everybody thinks they do but they don’t. You know, he absolutely lives for it and his mentality is to be the absolute best, and he believes he’s the best.
“He thinks he’s the best in the world, no question about it. It’s for us lot to debate who is, and people up and down the country and all around the world to debate what we think and it’s assisted by numbers.
“But in his own little world, Mo Salah believes and thinks and knows he’s the best player in the world. And it’s not that he thinks it or he wants it or he hopes for it, he does it and lives it.
“And when everybody else thinks they’re doing it, they’re not. He is absolutely on it, 24/7, and when he retires he will realise it himself, that he was different to everybody else. But until that day he just thinks, ‘This is it’, and he’s just tuned in that way.”
Salah will end 2024 with 29 goals and 23 assists for a combined goal contribution tally of 52 over the calendar year.
Everton, meanwhile, scored 37 times across 2024 in its entirety!
According to Opta’s Michael Reid, this figure of 52 means he ends the year with the most goal involvements across Europe’s big-five leagues in all competitions, eclipsing the likes of Harry Kane (50), Kylian Mbappe (49) and Vinicius Jr. (46).
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