Mohamed Salah - The King In Waiting

Mohamed Salah is the best football player in the world right now. The world just hasn't quite admitted it yet.

- Oliver Franklin-Wallis

THE LORD MAYOR of Liverpool is wearing a nervous smile and a gold ceremonial chain the size of a saucer, the kind worn to greet royalty or a foreign dignitary— which feels appropriate, because it’s not every day you get a visit from the Egyptian king. It’s a cloudless fall day in the city, and star Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah has come to the town hall to film an interview with an Egyptian TV channel. The producers wanted somewhere aspirational, opulent, to film their national icon, and honestly they couldn’t have picked better. The building is ostentatiously beautiful, late Georgian, all Corinthian columns and gold-filigree cornicing and crystal ballroom chandeliers that the Lord Mayor, a tiny woman named Mary, informs me each weigh a ton. The staff buzzes around nervously, chattering in low voices while the cameras roll in the next room. Salah! Even Mary, an Everton fan—and thus a supporter of Liverpool’s most hated rivals—is excited. “I’m not a bitter Blue,” she whispers, because all rivalries aside, who doesn’t love Mohamed Salah?