How Mo Salah became the slowest-burning overnight sensation in English football history

Mohamed Salah has scored 43 goals for Liverpool this season, taking the club to the brink of the Champions League final and giving himself a genuine chance of winning the Ballon d'Or.

But aside from the sheer quantity of his goals, what sets Salah apart?

Here is everything you need to know about the exploits of the man dominating the end of the season. 

He has a ravenous appetite

Mohamed Salah - Top goal scorers in Europe

If it seems like Salah scores in every game he plays that is because he generally does. If one thing has set the Egyptian apart this season it is his sheer consistency and appetite for goals - since December 30 Salah has started 18 games and scored in 16 of them.

His longest run of games without a goal this season is three, in September and October, while only once in the last six months has he failed to score in two successive games.

For context, Lionel Messi has twice gone five games without scoring, which shows the rate Salah is going at. He is the top scorer in Europe's top five leagues, ahead of Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Robert Lewandowski. It is astonishing stuff. 

He’s speeding up

In comparison to his current form, Salah started relatively slowly. He scored three goals in each of August, September and October - a more than respectable tally - but is regularly doubling that total now. The only month in which he dipped was January, and that was due to injury.

Mohamed Salah - Goals by month

The 25-year-old is getting more prolific as the season has gone on, which is partly why he pipped Kevin de Bruyne - a player whose best form was at the beginning of the season - to the PFA Player of the Year Award.

He scores at vital moments

In addition to the vast quantity of goals Salah scores, he also scores at important times - the key periods before half-time and full-time that change the complexion of games.

Mohamed Salah - when he scored

Of his 44 goals, 21 have been scored in the last 15 minutes of each half, suggesting that while teams might be able to keep him out for a while Salah will get you in the end.

He scores decisive goals

There are certain goalscorers who tend to add a little gloss to a scoreline, contributing the fourth to a 5-0 win. Salah is not one of those players. Of his 44 goals, 15 have come when the scores are level (10 of those being the first of the game), and another 15 when there was just one goal between the teams.

Based on the idea that scoring the single goal in a 1-0 win contributes two points to your team (by changing one point to three), Salah has been responsible for 20 points this season.

By way of comparison, Sadio Mane has contributed 10 points to the Liverpool cause and Roberto Firmino eight. Salah - as was the case against Roma on Tuesday night - is very much the main man.

Roma v Liverpool

He scores brilliant goals, simple goals, long-range goals - with a few signature strikes thrown in to the bargain

It goes without saying that having scored 43 goals this season Salah is a brilliant, instinctive finisher, but he actually scores four main types of goals, some of which are becoming trademarks.

The poacher’s effort

Liverpool may not have realised they were signing a poacher, but that is exactly what Salah has turned out to be.

His first goal for the club was a tap-in from a yard against Watford and 14 of his goals have been first-time finishes, many after rebounds from the goalkeeper or the woodwork. They keep the goal tally ticking over.

Watford 2 - 3 Liverpool (Mohamed Salah, 57 min)

The curler

When Salah has the ball on the right-hand side of the area he tends to have one thought in mind - curl the ball with his left foot towards the far corner of the goal. It is a strike he has perfected this season, particularly at the Anfield Road end where he has scored that exact type of goal against Southampton, Everton and now Roma.

When Salah picked up the ball in just that position after 35 minutes on Tuesday night it was obvious Juan Jesus should have shepherded him onto his right foot. Instead he allowed Salah to shoot and Roma paid the price as Salah unerringly found the top corner. An undervalued by-product of this goal is the reaction of the goalkeeper, who in each occasion dives but with arms withdrawn, an acceptance it is a futile effort. If given space on the edge of the box, Salah is deadly.

The dink

Salah’s second against Roma was another trademark strike - the beautifully-judged dink. His goal on Tuesday night was perhaps the hardest of all those he has scored this season, coming as it did from outside the area with Alisson closing him down, but there was also a sense that - once he was played through by Firmino - it was inevitable.

In the last fortnight Salah has scored three separate chips, against Manchester City, West Brom and now Roma. It is the type of finish that takes real courage, with the acknowledgement you could look silly if it doesn’t work. If executed correctly it is almost impossible to stop - and Salah knows exactly how to pull it off.

The ‘now you see him, now you don’t’ dribble

There have been times this season when Salah’s finishing has been reminiscent of Lionel Messi’s, no more so than when he is seemingly surrounded in the penalty area before somehow finding a gap to score.

As with Messi, Salah does not strike you as a devastating physical specimen. At just 5ft 9in and 71 kgs it seems he should be knocked off the ball more often than he is. But as with Messi, Salah has a low centre of gravity, is stronger than he looks and has a wand of a left foot.

He also has ice in his veins and is not scared to take his time to get a shot away.

Of his 43 goals, nine have been scored after taking at least four touches of the ball - a huge amount, particularly in the penalty area. For context, Salah had just 44 touches against Roma on Tuesday, which shows how unusual having four touches in one move is.

Mohamed Salah - Number of touches Salah takes to score

But when he gets going it is difficult to stop him. Three of Salah’s most memorable goals this season have been jaw-dropping dribbles, against Tottenham in February and twice against Watford last month.

They were Messi-esque, and they have a dual advantage. With opponents scared of his dribbling ability they back off, allowing him to unleash the curler. Either way, Salah tends to come out on top.

He can score from anywhere

The plot map of Salah’s goals illustrates quite how dangerous he is.

Mohamed Salah - Where he scored from

A short backlift means chances close to goal are easily put away, while he is deadly from the edge of the area or just outside. Then there are the real long range efforts - particularly if Ederson decides to clear the ball straight to him.

He does it in the big games

Salah is no flat-track bully, an accusation often levelled at so many strikers over the years. His scoring rate is remarkably consistent no matter who he is playing against. This season the Egyptian has played 14 games against the top six or in the Champions League knockout stages, scoring 12 goals - 0.86 per game.

Mohamed Salah - Flat-track bullies

In the other 33 games he has scored 31 goals - 0.94 goals per game. It is a tiny difference in relative terms and underlines his consistency against any calibre of opposition.

It also bears contrast with his peers. The top five goalscorers in the Premier League are Salah, Harry Kane, Sergio Aguero, Raheem Sterling and Jamie Vardy.

Of those five three of them - Kane, Aguero and Sterling - have a far inferior record against the big sides, while Salah is extremely consistent and Vardy (who is having an astonishing season) actually has far more success against the big teams than the also-rans. It is another big tick for Salah.

He is a creator as well as a goalscorer

Salah brings more than just goals. It may have been because his first two goals were scored in front of the Roma supporters, but the Egyptian only truly celebrated after setting up Sadio Mane for Liverpool’s third on Tuesday night.

That was his 12th assist of the season and a 13th soon followed for Roberto Firmino, the second most of any player for the club this season. That means he either scores or assists a goal every 67 minutes - a frankly astonishing record.

With Firmino averaging a goal or assist every 89 minutes and Mane one every 116 minutes, it demonstrated why this is a strike-force to be feared.

He has a signature celebration but seemingly no ego

Any self-respecting modern footballer looking to build their personal brand needs a stock celebration. Salah's now familiar pose - stock still, in front of the celebrating Liverpool fans - is a great image and is being copied in school playgrounds up and down the land.

He also seems extremely likeable, coming across in interviews as genuinely down-to-earth. Easier said than done when you consider that in the recent Egyptian elections Salah is reported to have received over a million votes, despite the fact he was not a candidate. Instead, Egyptians who wanted to register a protest vote crossed out the names of the two formal candidates and wrote Salah’s instead.

Salah is said to be a unifying force in Egypt, particularly as he played for neither Al Ahly or Zamalek - Cairo’s two bitter city rivals - instead making his professional debut for Arab Contractors before moving to Basel.

The Liverpool fans have unsurprisingly taken him to their hearts, finding a use for the James song Sit Down in the process:

No-one saw this coming

When Liverpool played Roma £34m for Salah last summer they clearly thought they were getting a serious talent, but they surely never expected this level of sustained brilliance.

The Egyptian scored 34 goals in two seasons at Roma - a more than reasonable return but hardly indicative of a talent that would start to challenge Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo for World Player of the Year honours.

His forgettable stint at Chelsea coloured many perceptions of him, particularly in England. Salah had shone at Basel, got his big move and then ended up having to take a step backwards after it failed to work out. He calmly rebuilt his career in Italy before returning to the Premier League for another shot, becoming one of the division’s most dominant figures within 10 months.

He is the slowest-burning overnight sensation in English football history, a man whose career at Stamford Bridge was finished by disappointing performances against Shrewsbury and Bradford City just over three years ago. Now he is shining in a Champions League semi-final or, as Paul Hayward wrote: “In classic world-class-player style, Salah pretty much decided to score”.

It is a genuinely brilliant story with seemingly no downside. At this stage all there is to do is enjoy a man who doesn’t look like he should be one of the world’s best footballers becoming exactly that.

So is he fit to be put in the same bracket as Messi and Ronaldo?

Absolutely. Salah has outscored both at club level this season - his 43 goals being one more than Ronaldo and three more than Messi - and talk of the Ballon d’Or is far from fanciful.

If he wins the Champions League with Liverpool and performs well at the World Cup he could well be crowned the best player on the planet.