Virgil van Dijk was clearly thrilled as Mohamed Salah made his return to Liverpool training on Tuesday. The Egyptian suffered AFCON heartbreak.
Mohamed Salah is back training with Liverpool – even if he won’t really want to be. But it’s Sadio Mane who’s off in his home country celebrating victory at the Africa Cup of Nations.
Salah certainly isn’t wasting any time, though. Under 48 hours since losing the final to Senegal, the Egyptian is on the training pitch, having supposedly told Jurgen Klopp that he’s ready to play.
In fact, Salah is in contention for Thursday’s game with Leicester City and Liverpool will watch this training session closely. If he’s fit, he’ll play.
There’s immediate excitement, then, and that was clear as Virgil van Dijk reacted to his Liverpool teammate’s return. “He’s back,” he announced for the cameras. “He’s back. The main man.”
Mohamed Salah is back at Liverpool
We’re incredibly intrigued to see how Salah is on Thursday – assuming he plays. He’s just suffered heartbreak with his national side, watching on as they lost on penalties. He didn’t even get to take one as his team bowed out after four.
But Salah appears to have the right mentality about this. His determination to get right back to business is wonderful and we may well see an even more focused player over the next few weeks.
He could easily have sunken into a slump here. That final was one of the absolutely biggest games of Salah’s career – in some ways, the biggest – and he fell agonisingly short. But he’s ready to play and use the blow to push him in the right direction.
Given his form over the first half of the season already, that’s a very exciting prospect. Exciting for Liverpool, anyway – we feel for anyone that has to come up against him.
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