Mo Salah is the fifth-highest Liverpool goalscorer of all time and the 10th-highest in Premier League history, but even that isn’t enough to spare him from being the subject of an astonishing rant from a fellow African forward who previously featured in the English top flight.
Yakubu Ayegbeni was speaking on talkSPORT about the Egyptian King when he made some rather bizarre criticisms of the 31-year-old, believing him to be nowhere near the cream of the crop from the continent in terms of the EPL.
The former Everton striker claimed (via Soccernet.ng): “Salah is not world-class in my opinion. He is not good with the ball, and the majority of his goals are lucky goals. The greatest African players in the Premier League are [Jay-Jay] Okocha, [Didier] Drogba, [Nwankwo] Kanu, Yaya Toure, Emmanuel Adebayor and Sadio Mane.”
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Let’s remind Yakubu of the numbers that Salah has put up during his time at Liverpool – 23 goals or more in each of his six full seasons at Anfield (plus 19 so far this term) and 205 in total for the club in less than seven years (Transfermarkt).
Think back to the manner in which he sat down the Everton defence in his first home Merseyside derby, the long-range rocket against Chelsea in 2019, or the stupendous solo goal against Manchester City in October 2021. There was nothing ‘lucky’ about any of those – they were nothing short of breathtaking.
Plenty of the names that the Nigerian cited have been magnificent Premier League players – Mane and Drogba were sublime forwards, while Okocha was a genius of a footballer – but none even come close to matching the Egyptian’s exploits.
If Salah hears the baffling criticism of Yakubu, he’d probably laugh at it and concentrate his time on doing what he does best – finding the net for Liverpool with a remarkable level of consistency that few players in world football can match.