There have been years when being named ‘Premier League Footballer of the Year’ has been more akin to a coronation than a vote: if the ritual is followed to the letter, the outcome is known to all long before the counting of the ballots, so much does a candidate stand out from the lot. This had been the case for Thierry Henry in 2004, for Cristiano Ronaldo in 2007 and 2008, for Luis Suarez in 2014 or for Mohamed Salah in 2018, when the Egyptian had finished his annus mirabilis with a record of forty-four goals and sixteen assists in fifty-two matches for Liverpool FC.
And then there are other vintages where we can only think too much, where we change our minds at almost every match, where we have the feeling that, whatever name we choose, we will have committed an injustice vis-à-vis players who deserved to be distinguished in this way. 2021-22 is one of them. Salah? Sure. But what about Mané, Jota and van Dijk, a found Alexander-Arnold? What about De Bruyne, of course, but also Mahrez, Foden, Ederson and Bernardo Silva? of Declan Rice, transformed – and transformative of West Ham, in England as in Europe? of Son Heung-Min, admirable as always, or even of Kane, despite a very complicated start to the season? Without forgetting outsiders like Conor Gallagher of Crystal Palace or Bukayo Saka, the symbol of the rebirth of Arsenal.
An undisputed coronation
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The Football Writers Association (FWA), which has awarded English football’s most prestigious individual trophy since 1948
But when the time came to take stock, contrary to what we had thought, one winner stood out clearly from the others. Mohammed Salah won with 48% of the vote, a 29-point lead over his runner-up Kevin de Bruyne and 35 over the third in the standings, West Ham midfielder Declan Rice, whose presence in the trio of head was partly explained by the consistency and the exceptional quality of his performances for the Hammers, but also by a point of regulation: we only vote for one player, which harms those whose clubs are richest in postulants, such as Sadio Mané and Virgil van Dijk, who finished fourth and fifth respectively in the ballot. Eight Liverpool players received at least one vote, all of them six from Manchester City, which only made Salah’s success all the more remarkable: no ‘Footballer of the Year’ had edged his rivals so far since Eden Hazard had everyone agree in 2015.
Mohamed Salah, scorer against Inter
Credit: Getty Images
A near-perfect year
Salah, however, had not had a perfect season as was the case in 2017-18. For several months, from August to the end of October, months whose memory had obviously not been erased in the memories of the voters, he had reached a kind of fullness, sometimes touched the sublime, notably scoring two incredible goals against Manchester City and Watford. But the winter had been more difficult. He had to join his national team and live with them the double disappointment of a defeat in the CAN final and, later, of an elimination from the World Cup, with, each time, the Senegal of his teammate Sadio Mané in the role of Nemesis.
If he had ever stopped contributing to Liverpool’s return to the title race, it had been in a more discreet role; the cloud over which he had flown for the first part of the season had dissipated, and Salah had descended among the mortals. Perhaps he was affected by the backlash of Egypt’s misfortunes, perhaps also by the uncertainty surrounding his future at Liverpool, his contract with the Reds due to end on June 30, 2023. But this wavering didn’t last long, and the Salah that we saw put Manchester United to harm in mid-April looked again like the one we had so admired six months earlier. In other words, to a potential ‘Footballer of the Year’.
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That said, the same could be said of Kevin de Bruyne, brilliant since the start of the calendar year, or of Mané, even more effective – 9 goals in 12 matches – when Jürgen Klopp asked him to play in the axis rather than on the left flank that he likes. That Salah ended up ahead of these two challengers, and all the others with them, should have come as no surprise. But that he did so clearly indicated that another factor was at work, not just the fact that he was close to winning the Premier League Golden Boot for the third time.
or that his club is today in search of an unprecedented quadruple.
That factor is Salah himself, the most alluring embodiment of football with a human face that Jürgen Klopp’s side can offer us game after game, even when they don’t play ‘well’. It’s his joy of playing, his brilliance, his imagination, his generosity. It’s his smile, his humility. It’s his way of celebrating his goals without indulging in monotonous and sterile choreographies from which real joy is absent. By choosing Salah, English football is also choosing Liverpool, a club and team that not only scores school goals, but also playground goals; a club and a team that breathe the pleasure of playing as much as the satisfaction of winning, with all that implies of imperfections, imperfections that bring it even closer to us spectators. You have to admire Liverpool and Salah for what they accomplish, but it’s not just what they accomplish that wins you over. The breath that seems to fill the sails of this team takes us with it as we are carried elsewhere by an irresistible music. Choosing Salah, isn’t that ultimately just another way of saying thank you to him?
Stanley Matthews, then in Blackpool, was the first recipient, just as he was also the first
Ballon d’Or
history eight years later.
Salah had already won this trophy in 2017-18 and 2018-19, the second time sharing it with Sadio Mané.
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