False 10: You'll never make such a legacy alone like Mo did

"I want to win something for this club."

It sounded simple at the time. Almost too simple.

Mohamed Salah arrived at Liverpool in 2017 without noise, without guarantees, carrying little more than pace, a left foot, a bit of disappointment following a woeful Chelsea spell, and a sentence that would only make sense years later.

Some players pass through clubs, and there are those rare ones who bend them, reshape them, leave fingerprints so deep that even time struggles to erase them.

Salah did not simply play for the Reds. He became a part of its modern mythology, quietly at first, almost deceptively so, and then all at once, like a storm you thought you understood until it was already too late.

When he arrived from AS Roma in 2017, there was curiosity, maybe even cautious worry, especially because of that unsuccessful Chelsea episode. What followed was not supposed to happen - not like that, not so quickly, not with that kind of force: 44 goals in a debut season! Records were falling like brittle glass. Defenders turning, guessing, failing... But all those numbers, no matter how absurd, were only ever the surface, because Salah's Liverpool was not built on goals alone. It was built on connections.

On a front three that did not just function, but understood. Sadio Mane on one side, direct and ruthless. Roberto Firmino in the middle, drifting, dissolving, creating spaces that did not exist a second earlier. And Salah on the right - not just finishing moves, but completing them, like the final piece of something carefully designed.

It looked simple. It never was.

And above them, slightly removed but always present, was Jurgen Klopp, the one who saw it before it existed. The one who built the structure in which Salah could become inevitable.

There was trust there, and a shared rise. A team that grew into itself, together.

Finally, the UEFA Champions League crown came, and that long-awaited Premier League title that ended a 30-year wait! Liverpool were no longer chasing history - they were writing it.

However, slowly and inevitably, things began to change.

First the edges, then the core.

Mane was gone. Firmino, too. The front three that once felt unsolvable reduced to memory, to highlights, to something people would one day argue about in lists and comparisons.

And eventually, even Klopp stepped away, leaving behind not just a team, but an identity that suddenly needed to survive without its creator.

In that particular moment - quiet, uncertain, transitional - Salah did something that is often overlooked when legacies are counted in trophies and goals.

The Egyptian stayed the same, or rather, he stayed enough the same.

He stayed the same.

FALSE 10: Hollow swan song and last dance without grace

Under Arne Slot, through different structures and different rhythms, he kept delivering. Goals still came, and runs still bent defences in familiar ways. That incredible, one-of-a-kind left foot still knew.

FALSE 10: Rise, Phoenix! It's time for one last flight

But he became much more than just an impeccable player. It was something else. Mo was the one who connected what Liverpool had been with what they were trying to become.

Transitions in football are rarely clean, as they stutter, but Salah made sure Liverpool never fully lost themselves. Even that recent friction with Slot - the kind that finds its way into headlines and speculation - felt less like a fracture and more like something else entirely.

A family affair.

Call it disagreement. Call it frustration. But it belongs to the same space as trust, as shared years, as everything that was built before it. Like in any real family, there are moments when voices rise, when directions differ, when understanding is not immediate. But what remains at Anfield is what Salah built at Liverpool, and it's not something a single moment can undo.

That is perhaps the strangest part of Mohamed Salah's legacy. His biggest virtue. A silent sorcery.

He made the extraordinary feel routine.

Pharaoh steps down from his Anfield throne: Salah says goodbye to Liverpool

With Salah, it has always been another goal. Another run. Another season above 20. Another defence was undone in the same way, and was still unable to stop it.

He adapted without announcing it. Shifted without losing himself. Stayed, while others moved on.

He was there when they rose, held the line when they had to change, and after all that, now he leaves on his terms as the one constant thread tying it all together.

Don't let your personal sympathies towards certain teams other than Liverpool fool you - there won't be another like Salah. Ever. Not in the same way, not with the same timing, not with the same quiet certainty that every time he cut inside, something irreversible was about to happen.

He was, he still is that big, that for the first time in a long time, it feels like the club - that massive and decorated - will have to learn again what it means to be Liverpool without him.

By: BOJAN BABIC