As Salah plays final Liverpool match, his legacy goes far beyond the pitch

When Mohamed Salah plays his last match for Liverpool this Sunday, he will leave as a cultural icon with a lasting legacy well beyond the game.

The 33-year-old Egyptian forward announced in March that he would leave Anfield at the end of this season, with Liverpool boss Arne Slot saying he “deserves a big send-off” after nearly a decade at the Premier League club.

Liverpool will take on Brentford this Sunday at Anfield, a fitting locale for the striker to play his final game for the club.

Salah’s status as one of the greatest Liverpool players of all time transcends the awards and top-tier statistics that he dominates – more than 250 goals for the club, two Premier League titles, four league Golden Boots, and three PFA Players of the Year awards, among others.

The legacy he has built as an openly Muslim and North African player in Europe – authentically and unapologetically – has left a lasting impact on thousands of fans and budding players alike.

“If you told me at 10-years-old that the best player in the league is Muslim, I’d have called you a liar. And if you told me his name was Mohammed Salah, I would have told you to get out of my room, basically,” London-based football journalist Ahmed Shooble told Al Jazeera last month.

As a young fan, Shooble recalls the struggles of navigating the quintessentially English football atmosphere synonymous with drinking and gambling, both of which are forbidden in Islam.

Salah being a devout Muslim and “authentically himself” was the first time Shooble saw his own identity take up space on the global football stage. For Shooble, even Salah’s trademark celebration of sujoud (bending down in prostration) was testimony that nothing is possible without God.

“Islamophobia, I hate to say it, is on the rise again in the UK and generally across Europe as well,” Shooble said. “I guess Salah is contributing to the lessening of that just purely by being himself.”

He emphasised how the Egyptian great neither forced any sort of narrative, nor was he overly performative when it came to his faith.

“I think that sort of piety and humility that he shows when it comes to his faith, it’s striking, and it goes against a lot of what people hear about Muslims on a daily basis that are completely untrue,” Shooble explained.

Beyond being one of the most visibly Muslim athletes in England, Salah’s identity as a North African player has equally flipped the script for football in Europe, North African sports journalist Maher Mezahi told Al Jazeera.

Despite ranking in the upper echelons of European football, Salah’s upbringing was marked by hardship, according to Mezahi. Five days a week, he would make a four-hour bus journey each way from his village of Nagrig to capital city Cairo to train with the club El Mokawloon, instilling a sense of discipline in his formative years that he carried on to the global stage.