:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/59080371/933078220.jpg.0.jpg)
One of my favorite exercises is imagining an All-World starting XI or 23 that I would call up if an advanced alien civilization challenged us to a futbol match to decide who controls Planet Earth.
Until this season, I can’t say there were all that many EPL players that would have made the cut. Kevin De Bruyne, certainly; Kun Aguero maybe. Eden Hazard is a notch below and finds himself behind the likes of Neymar and Ronaldo on the left side of an attacking three. On the right side, Messi is the guaranteed starter, and I had always fancied Gareth Bale or Arjen Robben as the backup. This was a worthy argument until this season’s arrival of a player who looks like a FIFA video-game player with all the attacking settings set to maximum.
On Saturday, said player did not just beat the opposition. Said player did not just dominate the opposition. Said player did not just destroy the opposition. No. Said player did something only the most elite of the elite can do... Think of names like Ayrton Senna, Diego Maradona, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, and Lionel Messi: Said player demoralized the opposition with a killer instinct that only the most eminent of all-time greats possess.
Liverpool’s Egyptian international right winger Mo Salah toyed with Watford, and with a four-goal haul (plus a peach of an assist!) condemned the opposition to ashes.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at Salah’s fourth goal (Liverpool ‘s fifth)... once Salah’s shot hits the back of the net, see if you can spot the moment that Watford keeper Orestis Karnezis and some of his defenders simply vanish, leaving behind only a pile of dust.
This performance was so spectacular, so awe-inspiring, so devastating that it deserves its own room in one of the great museums in the world.
I have no other words.
*
Did you captain The great Mo Salah? Did you benefit from his STUPENDOUS 63-point haul in Togga? Do you have words to describe what we saw? Is Roma’s selling Salah to Liverpool for peanuts one of the all-time worst (for Roma) and best (for Liverpool) business transactions known to man? Let’s talk all Salah all the time in the comments section!