"Take a step back, and it's pretty remarkable that the current situation at Liverpool is being framed in the simplest terms: Mohamed Salah vs. Arne Slot. And I don't just mean that in terms of who's right and reasonable, but even in terms of who should take the first step, with Slot saying Tuesday night that "I haven't said I'm not going to talk to him. And the next question is should the initiative come from me or from him...""
"Except there's somebody missing from this narrative. Someone who gets paid to make the big decisions, someone whose big decisions led -- however indirectly and in good faith -- to the current impasse, someone who Salah was presumably referencing in his rant and, most importantly, someone who will ultimately decide how this gets resolved. And that's the club itself. More specifically, since this is by definition a soccer issue, Michael Edwards, whose title literally is CEO of Football and Richard Hughes, the sporting director."
The Liverpool conflict has been reduced to a binary matchup between Mohamed Salah and Arne Slot, centered on who should initiate reconciliation. Slot publicly questioned whether he or Salah should make the first move. The dynamic has been portrayed as puerile and schoolyard-like, with fans and media assigning parental roles and caricatures. A crucial decision-maker is missing from the narrative: the club hierarchy. Michael Edwards and Richard Hughes carry responsibility for football decisions and will ultimately determine the outcome. The club has offered only brief public support for Slot and otherwise remained notably silent.
Read at ESPN.com
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