The lack of protection for Mo Salah at Liverpool has become disturbingly normalised.
Many a fan now accepts that the Egyptian can be hacked down, pulled to the turf, and manhandled to no end – and often without any form of protection issued by the officials responsible for overseeing any particular game.
As such, it’s hard not to feel a little bitter about Henry Winter’s latest tweet questioning a lack of safeguarding of ‘players like Bukayo Saka’.
At some point officials are going to have to discuss whether they are prepared to protect players like Bukayo Saka.
— Henry Winter (@henrywinter) May 14, 2023
It’s worth emphasising that we’re all for seeing creative, exciting players like the Arsenal man given a little extra protection given it’s ultimately not only in the best interests of the player’s wellbeing but, arguably, also the game itself.
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We at Empire of the Kop would urge readers to take a look at The Tomkins Times‘ take on the issue and the staggering data involved to get a real grasp of just how little referees seem to care about our Egyptian King.
“The statistic is that Mo is the one player who is fouled the least compared to other [top] strikers,” Jurgen Klopp was quoted as saying by The Guardian last year.
“Honestly, you have to ask the refs; I don’t know because we constantly think he gets fouled.
“He gets confronted with the [claim] that someone calls him a diver. That is an absolute shame.
“We don’t even get close to the number of free-kicks that we should have. You must ask other people how that is possible because he is the guy who is constantly with the ball around the box and there is no foul: interesting. How is that? It is just not possible.”
As with any other calls made against the club, we’re loathe to suggest that those responsible for executing the laws of the game are in any way corrupt or totally biased against the club and individual players.
However, the growing degree of incompetency present in what many believe to be the leading top-flight in world football cannot go unaddressed much longer.
For the sake of players like Saka and Salah, the sport needs officials brave enough (and competent enough) to overlook any kind of biases or general messaging preventing them from protecting the league’s most exciting talents.