The Players Are Hungry, We Must Give Title Proper Try, Says Mohamed Salah

Mohamed Salah says Liverpool must give the 2023-24 season run-in a “proper try” as they continue in their quest to collect more trophies.

The Reds host Manchester City at Anfield on Sunday afternoon in the Premier League, leading the visitors by a single point at the top of the standings ahead of the latest round of fixtures.

Jürgen Klopp’s men have already lifted the Carabao Cup this season after securing a memorable Wembley win over Chelsea, and they remain firmly in the hunt in both the Europa League and Emirates FA Cup too.

Asked about what is different from two years ago when Liverpool was in a similar position of competing across multiple fronts, Salah told Premier League Productions: “I don’t want to take anything from the [previous] players. They help a lot in the team in the past. They were unbelievable here. All the players who left were unbelievable.

“This year I would say [it’s a] different squad, but the players are very hungry. We have a good chance to win everything. We just need to give it a proper try. We have nothing to lose, [so] just give it a try and see.”

It’s tricky to choose one because we’ve been working together for eight years. I think he just lets his players have freedom in the game and just to express themselves. Everybody can feel free and do what he wants.

On what it’s like to play alongside Darwin Nunez…

He’s a great player for sure. But I always see that I need to adapt to the players who play alongside me because before it was Cody [Gakpo]. I tried to do a partnership with him, before Cody it was Bobby [Roberto Firmino], and we had a really good relationship together in the game and we understand each other. Whoever is going to play with me, I need to understand his game and I need to understand his strengths, so he can help me a lot in the game.

[Nunez is] kind of a different player. We never had that quality before [that] he loves to run in the space. He doesn’t like the ball much in his feet, which is unique [and] he’s fast. He keeps looking at me because he knows I can get him the ball easily in the space and he can finish the situation. His numbers this season are improving a lot, which is great for us. I always try to watch him in training and try to watch the other guys, to be fair. Like Cody when he plays. Darwin when he plays striker, I can give the ball to him in the space, but Cody doesn’t like the ball in the space, he likes it into his feet, so it’s different. They are different kinds of players so you need to adapt to the players that you have. This is the main strength.

On working with Liverpool’s younger players and giving them advice…

I think the main point for me is to try to talk to them and show them that you really care about them before you give them advice. If you give them advice, they won’t really listen to you because [I think] if you don’t show that you really care they won’t take it.

If you really show that you care a lot about them and you really talk to them and that they can achieve big things. They can be great and just need to do small things to change it. They’re human beings, they’re not going to change in one day everything. The most important thing for me is to show the players that I care about them – I do. Then after that, it’s easy to communicate with them. It’s easy to get them under your arm and just keep talking and advising them.

On what advice he wishes he received when he was younger…

[To] work mentally. Working mentally is much more difficult than your work physically. I work in the gym almost every day for an hour and a half. Most of the time I go home and I work again, but it’s so hard to keep working on mental things. [Doing] 15 minutes every day, it’s so hard.

On what he works on mentally in those 15 minutes…

I do more than that! It’s really tricky. Trust me. I’ve been doing it for a few years and I’m telling you, you sit with yourself alone for 15 minutes before you sleep, or when you wake up. It’s much harder than when you go to the gym every day. It’s a lot of things to think about. It’s a lot of what you want to achieve and a lot of situations you want to experience before they happen. So, when it happens, you’re not surprised [and] you feel you have experienced it before. Sometimes you need to trick your brain into just lying to yourself and your brain won’t make a difference between the fake thing and the real thing. You keep going into the process, you keep lying to yourself until you believe the idea that you want to put in your brain.

On whether he visualises goals in his head…

Yeah, 90 per cent of my goals were like this. Even more. You just visualise what you want to happen, and you keep repeating it. Sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes it works.

On whether there is a motto or a belief that is uniting the team after his ‘never give up’ shirt against Barcelona in 2019…

If you ask me again if would I do it now, I would say no! But I just chose it like half an hour before the game. I went to the game, and I said there were going to be a lot of memes if we didn’t win! But it is what it is. Now, I love the whole squad, I think the players are really into football. Players want to achieve big things, they’re really respectful and they ask a lot of questions, which is what I love. When you ask a question that means you really want to learn something. That’s the key for me.

On his huge interest in chess and whether it helps his game…

I don’t know exactly [how]. I’m not lying, but definitely it does. The way I’m addicted to it is insane. I play almost every day. Not less than seven or eight games or something. Sometimes it’s more. I don’t know if it develops something in the game or not, but it makes you think strategically. I don’t know exactly [how], but I really feel that I just love to play chess.