Jose Mourinho has now shared what he tried to tell Chelsea about Mohamed Salah back in 2016 after the now-Liverpool winger’s loan spell at AS Roma.
The Egyptian attacker is one of the most famous ‘ones who got away’ at the west London side, with Kevin De Bruyne the other obvious case study for Chelsea.
And speaking on The Obi One Podcast, Mourinho has now detailed that he wanted to loan out Salah in 2016 for a third time rather than sell him, with Chelsea ultimately selling the forward to Roma.
As we know, Liverpool signed Salah one year later in 2017, with the attacker since becoming a modern-day Premier League legend and one of five players to score 200 goals for the Reds.
Mourinho said: “To be honest, they left [De Bruyne and Salah] because they wanted to leave. They left because they didn’t want to wait. Their history proves that their option was good, because they did the career they did.
“They have reached a high standard. But sometimes kids, they do decisions like that because they cannot wait. They do decisions like that because they don’t have the patience to be calm and wait for the right moments and sometimes their career goes in the wrong direction for them.
“When people tell me you let go Salah go, I say exactly the opposite. I bought Salah. I was the one who said buy that guy. He was going from Basel to Liverpool and I made the fight to make him to come to Chelsea. Then, yes, then comes the part where to be a Chelsea player you need to perform or you have to wait.
“He didn’t want to wait, he wanted to go on loan and then Chelsea at a certain point decided to sell him. He went to Fiorentina and then Roma and then Chelsea decided to sell, that was not me deciding to sell. I was saying let him go on loan if he feels he needs to play every minute of every game.”
Mohamed Salah would not be who he is now if he didn’t leave Chelsea
Salah is easily one of the best players to ever grace the Premier League having become a superstar for Liverpool since joining the club in 2017.
Yet it’s easy to forget that none of this would have happened if the attacker simply didn’t leave Chelsea when he did seven years ago, with the Blues clearly holding Salah back.
Indeed, Roma and then Liverpool have made Salah the superstar he now is in the game, and departing west London was the decision that changed it all for the Egyptian international.
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