Mohamed Salah

[King Binny]

[article=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2478610/Liverpool-rival-Spurs-Basels-Mohamed-Salah-Derbys-Will-Hughes.html#ixzz2j4kDwcL0 ]Liverpool are rivalling Tottenham for FC Basel winger Mohamed Salah and could also make a move for Derby's Will Hughes.

Salah, the speedy 21-year-old Egyptian, is in rich form having scored six goals for his country in their World Cup qualification campaign.

He caught the eye with his performance against Chelsea in the Champions League earlier this season.

Sportsmail revealed Spurs boss Andre Villas Boas was keen on Salah earlier this year but wanted to see whether he continued to progress.

Villas-Boas has asked to be kept informed with Basel ready to sell in January but the Swiss side want £15m.

​

Liverpool, who are also hopeful of signing Hughes, are ready to buy again in January as they sense the chance to make an impact on the Premier League title race and Champions League qualification.[/article]



Goal against Chelsea in CL last month


Goal against Chelsea last season


Goal against Tottenham last season


Hattrick including solo goal against Zimbabwe

 

[King Binny]

Apr 2013
[article]"Basel set up to hit us on the counterattack and they did that really effectively, I thought their right-winger [Salah] posed us a lot of problems," Tottenham's veteran keeper Brad Friedel, 41, was quoted as saying by UEFA.com.

"In the second half he did a great job of keeping possession for the team."

Salah has been a revelation for Basel since joining from Egyptian outfit Arab Contractors last summer. His form earned him the best African Young Player of the Year award.[/article]

Sep 2013
[article=http://www.thenational.ae/article/20130930/ARTICLE/130939904]If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Basel’s Mohamed Salah must sometimes seem like a greatest hits tribute act to some of the world’s finest players, past and present.

Exhibit A, his astonishing goal for Egypt in the 4-2 win over Zimbabwe in a World Cup qualifier last June; receiving a pass from Mohamed Aboutrika just inside the opposition half, Salah evaded a challenge with a deft first touch, drifted past the last defender into the penalty area, before effortlessly clipping the ball past the advancing goalkeeper. The similarity to Michael Owen’s goal for England against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup was uncanny.

But Salah, 21, is no karaoke footballer. His career trajectory suggests he is well on the way to becoming one of the best players to emerge from Arab and African football.

And potentially, the world.

“Salah is the future of Egyptian football. He was the best player against Zimbabwe,” the Egypt coach Bob Bradley said after Salah’s heroics in Harare. “His performance was historic.”

Salah began his career at Arab Contractors in 2010, where his 11 goals in 41 league appearances shot him to prominence and paved the way for a move to Switzerland in the summer of 2012.

He has netted 14 times in 58 matches so far for Basel.

The rest of the world is now singing his praises, too.

This season, Salah has already scored 10 goals for club and country.

And next in his sights are Schalke in Tuesday night’s Uefa Champions League clash at St Jacob-Park.

Coaches often like to differentiate between great goalscorers and scorers of great goals.

Salah, a winger-cum-forward, is the perfect hybrid of both.

He has blistering pace and rarely scores tap-ins, preferring mazy solo runs and expert finishes with his left foot.

Chelsea, for one, will be sick of the sight of Salah.

Last season, he scored in Basel’s 3-1 loss to the Premier League side in their Europa League semi-final second-leg meeting, but it was his performance against them last month that really grabbed their attention. An equaliser (let’s label this one Exhibit B) reminiscent of Rivaldo’s against England in the 2002 World Cup quarter-final for Brazil was followed by a role in the move that produced the corner from which captain Marco Streller scored Basel’s winner in the 2-1 victory in their opening Champions League Group E game at Stamford Bridge.

It has not just been at club level though that he has impressed.

Salah’s form for Egypt has been superb since making his debut against Sierra Leone just over two years ago. His 17 goals in 24 international matches testify to that.

Last year he scored in all three of Egypt’s group matches at the London Olympics; a stunning shot (Exhibit C) in the 3-2 loss to Brazil that Lionel Messi would have been proud of, and goals in the 1-1 draw with New Zealand and 3-1 win over Belarus.

It is his role in leading Egypt to the brink of qualification for next year’s World Cup in Brazil that has captured the hearts of his countrymen. A week after the hat-trick against Zimbabwe, he scored against Mozambique in a 1-0 win that kept Egypt at the top of the group.

His goal in the last qualifier, a 4-2 win over Guinea earlier this month, propelled Salah to No 1 in the goalscoring charts with six, and ensured Egypt’s progress to the play-offs for the finals. In exactly two weeks, Salah and his teammates take on Ghana at Baba Yara Stadium for their first-leg play-off, and on October 19 they host the return leg at the 30 June Stadium in Cairo.

Even for a country with a rich football history, qualification for Brazil 2014, to the backdrop of debilitating political and social chaos, could well prove to be the Egypt’s finest hour.

Alongside the veteran Aboutrika, who impressed UAE fans during a loan stint with Baniyas last season, the not-so-secret weapon Salah will be central to Bradley’s plans.

“Salah is a perfect professional player both on and off the pitch,” the American Bradley said after the defeat of Zimbabwe. “He will play a great role in guiding us to the World Cup finals.”

Salah now goes into arguably the most important two weeks of his career in the form of his life.

On Saturday, he reenacted Arjen Robben’s Champions League winning goal for Bayern Munich with yet another run and finish in Basel’s 2-2 home draw with Sion (Exhibit D).

Top of the Swiss league. Taking the Champions League by storm and within touching distance of World Cup qualification.

For Salah, life is sweet.

By next summer, fans, not to mention opposition defenders, could well be dancing to Salah’s tunes.[/article]

 

[King Binny]

Oct 2013
[article=http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/talent-scout-mohamed-salah--the-hero-against-chelsea-who-could-become-a-star-in-europe-8879775.html]FC Basel’s focus on producing Swiss talent has been the nucleus of their success in recent seasons, but a change of focus at St. Jakob-Park has started to happen.

Bayern Munich’s Xherdan Shaqiri, Napoli midfielder Gökhan İnler and former Liverpool defender Philipp Degen remain prime examples of the success its youth system has achieved in recent years.

Despite the core of their squad being predominantly Swiss, manager Murat Yakin is now starting to concentrate on and reap the rewards of Basel’s extensive scouting system by focusing on lesser-known areas of South America and North Africa, with added attention on Egypt in particular.

And it’s certainly working. Yakin’s side recorded a surprise Champions League victory over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in September and could have made it two wins out of two if it wasn’t for Schalke midfielder Julian Draxler’s breathtaking strike on Matchday 2 of the competition.

Not only did the famous result in West London announce Basel’s emergence onto the European scene, but it also drew attention to a certain player whose rise over the past season has seen him linked with both Tottenham and Serie A giants Inter Milan.

Egyptian international Mohamed Salah Ghaly was unearthed by Yakin’s scouting network in 2011 following a handful of impressive displays for Egyptian Premier League side Arab Contractors, where he scored 11 goals in 41 appearances.

The 21-year-old was named African football’s Most Promising Talent at the 2012 CAF Awards after scoring three in four at the London Olympic games.

Three months on, Salah scored twice in a pre-season friendly for Egypt’s Under-23 side against Basel. His 45-minute cameo performance did enough to win him a seven-day trial with the Swiss giants and he was subsequently signed a month later after agreeing terms on a four-year contract.

Salah’s first season in Switzerland saw him settle into the Basel squad with little trouble. The culture shock of moving from North Africa to Europe proved no obstacle to a player who assisted his team all the way to the Europa League semi-finals, where they were eventually defeated home and away by Chelsea.

However, it was Salah’s two goals and five assists in the Europa League that finally made other teams pinpoint him as Basel’s main creative and attacking spark. Having netted his first European goal in the quarter-final first leg against Spurs, the skillful winger went onto to lift the Swiss League and runners up in the Swiss Cup.

El-Gharbia born Salah continued where he left off from last season after scoring a wonder-goal in a World Cup qualifier against Zimbabwe in June. It prompted Egypt boss Bob Bradley to dub him the “perfect professional player” and the “future of Egyptian football”.

You would envisage those words potentially damaging such a young player, putting added pressure on him before his career has even taken off, but Salah emphasised Bradley’s comments in true fashion by scoring 10 goals for club and country so far this season.

By no means is Salah a striker, yet his consistency in front of goal is one of the main attributes of his game. With 17 goals in 24 appearances for the Egyptian national team, Salah’s prolificacy puts him ahead of more traditional wingers and makes him the catalyst of each Basel attack.

Salah is the perfect mixture between a winger and a forward. He looks lightweight yet his direct running and mesmerising footwork has bamboozled fullbacks across Europe. Chelsea left-back Ashley Cole struggled against Salah’s deceivingly quick pace in their Champions League group game last month.

Although predominantly left-footed, Salah is ambidextrous and this is what makes him one of Europe’s most prodigious talents. His unpredictable solo runs are a key feature of his game and the reason many defenders find him so difficult to stop.

Capable of playing as an attacking midfielder behind the two strikers or on either wing, every pass Salah makes is completed with an instantaneous flick of a switch and his opponents so far this season have been unable to stop his creativity in the final third.

In terms of weaknesses, Salah’s defensive game needs fine-tuning. Many wingers forget to track-back and although he isn’t one of them, he does have a tendency at leaving Basel vulnerable on the counter attack after going on a mazy run. Another considerable weakness is his finishing. He could easily score 20-30 goals a season if he improves his composure in front of goal.

But regardless of his minor downfalls, Salah remains hot property in Europe right now.

From a relative unknown Egyptian youngster to an established European winger, Mohamed Salah has the world at his feet and will hope to live up to Bob Bradley’s words by becoming the poster boy of Egyptian, and maybe even European football. It’s just a matter of time.[/article]