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This is a sharp change in the landscape of football. For decades, it was assumed that Real Madrid and Barcelona represented the apex of the sporting hierarchy: They were the sport’s alphas, ultimate targets and mega-predators. This is no longer valid. Real Madrid and Barcelona are not at the top of the food chain for now and for a while.
Football’s swirling gossip industry didn’t realize it wasn’t particularly important. Somewhat fantastical in nature. It’s part of the fun. If it proves to be based on nothing more than a whisper, smoke, and air bouncing among click-hungry websites in Europe, then it really does no harm*. There may be disappointment in the end – when you get Luuk de Jong while waiting for Mohamed Salah – but in the meantime, readers enjoy the flight of fantasy. Advertisers are glowing. Websites get paid.
[*Other than to further undermine trust in the news ecosystem in general, and therefore permit the rise of the deliberately, cynically unreliable and the perniciously fake.]
The important thing, however, is that the players – or rather agents – have not yet realized this fact. The changing tectonics of the game mean that for a player like Salah, flirting with Marca and AS is no longer a bargaining chip. Real Madrid is no longer an immediate threat to Liverpool.
This is a significant change and not necessarily a positive change. Players in the Premier League’s top six teams are – more or less – effectively trapped. They won’t easily sell to each other, as Tottenham proved by rejecting Manchester City’s bids for Harry Kane last summer. PSG is probably the only club that can afford to save them.
Especially Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Manchester United are no longer a valid ground for Real Madrid and Barcelona. In these interviews, Salah has twice said that his future is in the hands of his club. At the time, it was considered a challenge to Liverpool: offering him a contract that met his true worth, or something else.
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