Champions League: Arne Slott praises the return of Mohamed Salah on an important night for both

Arne Slott has good memories in Marseille. It was here in 2022 when his Feyenoord side held on to secure a place in the Europa League final.

On the eve of this week’s match at the Stade Velodrome, he was asked about those memories. He was also asked awkwardly and rudely about Xabi Alonso’s links to the Liverpool job.

Any hype surrounding the Liverpool manager’s future has been quieted by an impressive European away performance from his side, who added Marseille to Eintracht Frankfurt and Inter Milan as the teams they have beaten on their travels this season.

Their 13-game unbeaten run (W7 and 6) in all competitions may have been uninspiring for the most part, but it is the longest streak of any team in Europe’s top five leagues. In and of itself, that should be credited. The last match Liverpool lost was in November.

More importantly for Slot, this was the first win in a match Mohamed Salah has started for Liverpool since November 4, when they beat Real Madrid in the Champions League. It now appears that the line has been firmly drawn following Salah’s interview at Leeds, and both player and manager can move forward to improve the football club.

The truth is that they both need each other. Before the match, Slott told TNT Sports: “In the moments when I wasn’t playing, I was trying something different. We gave away goals from every possession we had. If there’s one player in Liverpool’s history who can score goals, it’s Mohamed Salah.”

It was a night in which Salah did not add to his club record of 46 Champions League goals for Liverpool, although he should have done so when he shot wide in the second half, but the confidence with which Liverpool played in a 4-2-2-2 formation will leave Sloat happy and may give him food for thought in the coming weeks.

“It tells us a lot about how professional he is [Salah] “It is that he could be out for over a month with a different team and be very fit to play 90 minutes for us after one day of training,” Slott said. “He was very close to scoring. Usually it’s a goal from him, but it didn’t hurt us because we scored three goals.”