Mo Salah's Future: Saudi Riches, MLS Interest, and European Ambitions
Mo Salah walked off the pitch on Tuesday night with another epic behind him and an even bigger decision ahead.
Hours after Egypt’s World Cup heartbreak – a 3-2 defeat to Argentina in which a 2-0 lead evaporated in the final 12 minutes before Enzo Fernandez struck in stoppage time – Fabrizio Romano lifted the lid on the calls already circling around one of the game’s great modern forwards.
Salah is a free agent now. No fee, no negotiations with Liverpool, no compromise with a selling club. For the first time since he exploded into superstardom at Anfield, his future rests solely on the contract he chooses to sign.
Nine years, 211 goals, and a legacy
Liverpool have lost far more than a right winger.
Salah’s nine-year stay on Merseyside ended this summer with the Egyptian firmly installed as the club’s third-highest goalscorer of all time. He leaves behind 211 goals, a Champions League, a Premier League title that broke a 30-year wait, and a standard of consistency that turned 20-goal seasons into routine.
He also leaves behind a £400,000-per-week wage packet, the kind of salary that instantly narrows his market. Any club wanting Salah now doesn’t just need ambition. It needs serious financial muscle.
The calls begin: Saudi and MLS step forward
According to Romano, that hasn’t scared everyone away.
“He has the possibility from Saudi [Arabia] because in Saudi they always wanted Mo Salah. Already [for] two or three years, Mo Salah has been a top target,” the transfer reporter said on his YouTube channel, outlining the first clear contours of the race.
Saudi interest is no surprise. Al-Ittihad tested Liverpool’s resolve three summers ago with a £150m deadline-day bid and were sent away empty-handed. Now there’s no transfer fee to negotiate, only a contract to build – and Saudi Pro League clubs have made an art form out of constructing eye-watering deals.
But the Gulf is not alone.
“My understanding is that also from the MLS, some calls took place to understand the situation of Mo Salah, so MLS could be a possibility as well. MLS, Saudi, let’s see what Salah decides,” Romano added, confirming that the United States has joined the chase.
Those “calls” matter. They signal more than curiosity; they show that clubs in two booming markets see Salah not just as a goalscorer, but as a global billboard, a league-shaping signing.
Saudi or MLS – or one last European chapter?
This is where the story sharpens.
Saudi Arabia can offer unmatched money, a league packed with star names and the promise of being one of its headline attractions from day one. MLS can offer lifestyle, a growing competition, and the allure of doing in America what Lionel Messi has started in Miami: bending a league’s narrative around a single superstar.
Both can pay. Both will sell him a vision.
But there’s another pull that can’t be measured in appearance fees and image rights. The 34-year-old might still feel he belongs in the furnace of European football, where Champions League nights, title races and Golden Boot chases define legacies.
The article of faith around Salah has always been his standards. Even in his final seasons at Liverpool, as the team around him fluctuated, his numbers rarely dipped. For a player so fiercely competitive, the idea of “semi-retirement” in Saudi Arabia or MLS – however unfair that label might be to those leagues – may not sit easily just yet.
The financial reality bites
Any European club considering a move, though, knows the equation is brutal.
Salah has just come off a Liverpool deal worth around £400,000 per week. Even if he compromises, the package will still land in a bracket only a handful of European sides can entertain, especially without the cushion of amortising a transfer fee over a long contract.
That reality tilts the board. Saudi clubs, backed by state-aligned funds, have already shown they can meet or exceed Premier League-level wages. MLS, with designated player slots and commercial upside, can structure deals that lean heavily on sponsorship and marketing.
For Europe, the question is simple: who can pay Salah what he wants, give him a platform worthy of his status, and still make the numbers work in an era of financial scrutiny?
Salah’s pause – and Liverpool’s new reality
For now, the man at the centre of it all steps away.
After Egypt’s agonising World Cup exit – surrendering a 2-0 lead to the world champions in the final stretch – Salah will take some overdue downtime. Romano expects decisions to wait until after the tournament, when the dust settles and he and his long-time agent Ramy Abbas can weigh the options with clear heads.
Back on Merseyside, the adjustment has already begun.
The famous number 11 shirt on Liverpool’s right flank is empty. The patterns that defined an era – Trent Alexander-Arnold’s diagonal passes into space, Salah’s trademark cut-inside-and-finish – now belong to the past. Whoever steps into that role next will be judged against a player who turned that channel into his personal stage.
What comes next?
Saudi Arabia or MLS would turn Salah into the face of a project. Staying in Europe would keep him in the unforgiving spotlight of elite competition.
The calls have started. The money is there. The stage is set.
Now the football world waits to see which kind of legacy Mo Salah wants to write in the final act of a glittering career.
