Far away from England and in a different time period, Club Nacional de Football were celebrating an important win over Charley FC on March 3 1918, a victory led by Abdón Porte, the star, captain, and defensive midfielder of the Uruguayan club. Porte has been a crucial part of every one of the 19 titles Nacional won between 1912 and 1917. This victory was important to him because it marked his return from the bench.

After the match, the team agreed to meet at a bar for celebration with one player staying behind who promised to join them later. That player waited for everyone to leave including staff and security before walking onto the pitch, pulled out a gun and shot himself in the heart.

This story is important for context, but that's for another part.

The Interview Dissected Around The World

This interview has easily been the most dissected, torn apart, attacked, defended, justified, hated, loved, and everything in between. In context, The Athletic had two articles a day about the interview at a certain point. These aren't general articles about Salah but only the interview. Let's put the parts that matter in perspective.

Let's first state that this whole mess has been simply postponed until the end of the Africa Cup of Nations. Carraghed issued an apology to Salah. His apology was carefully packaged and calculated. Following that, Salah played against Brighton and assisted a goal, breaking two records casually in the process.

Following the match, Rio Ferdinand tried provoking Carragher by saying that Anfield stood up and applaued Salah after the Brighton game. Carragher wa smart and avoided the trap by saying that Salah simply deserved it. So far, we don't know if Salah will stay at Liverpool nor can we know. It is impossible to know right now.

The reason it took me long to write about this topic is because of the overwhelming articles about the issue, as I said, The Athletic alone had two articles a day, and while I do love flexing the fact that I am subbed to the Athletic, I did stop reading after the 20th article. Another reason is simply because there's a problem with how it is all reported. The media seems to have given up writing accurate headlines and quotes, many breakdowns are ingenuine, this is more specifc to my region of the world, but global media, The Athletic included, isn't excempt from that description either. If something, thank God this has been postponed because articles, celebrity reactions, tweets, and just everything has been overwhelming and enormous.

New details kept appearing, a detail here, a calrification there, an update somewhere else. Suddenly, old trivial pieces of news became important and vague past statements gained meaning suddenly.

As time passed by, while I was preparing what should have been a one-off post was stretched into countless directions. However, I will go through what I deemed important because the more you look at the issue, the more you realise that there's no single side story that can be fully accepted nor dismissed.

Salah vs Carragher

The contrast between Arabic sources, coming in hot with bad translations and engagement-obsessed headlines, coupled with audience impatiences and addiction to fire headlines, to the actual statements said would have been laughable if it weren't for the fact that it seems like the rest of the world, including English media and X accounts do seem to be talking a different language to the actually statements. So, let's deal with truths.

The first truth was flipped in this crisis was Salah's interview itself.

The dominant narrative be it inside or outside our region was an empotional one: Salah was angry and affected and this was an impoulsive reaction after everything that he went through. Meanwhile Carragher was the calculated mean and malicious man targetting Salah on purpose. Salah and his agent said that Carragher was obsessed with him also pointing that he was called a Donkey by Messi and was ignored by Cristiano for a reason.

The reality and history simply tell us that it was opposite. Salah interview was fully planned as usual. There's no doubt Salah was angry but that was before the interview. During the interview, however, Salah had specific sentences with specific wording that he repeated more than onces calmly and deliberately.

This is not new, Salah never speaks to the medial without knowing exactly what he is going to say, what he is trying to achieve and the reason.

It All Started With The Wrong Question

After Salah finisehed speaking rationally and calmingly about the dissapointing result against Leeds there was a part that many ignored intentionally because it wasn't useful for their argument was the most important.

"I have been on the bench for the third cosecutive match and I don't know why?"

On the surface this seems like a legit question, however, it is the wrong question. In my opinion, the real question Salah wanted to ask but never actually had the guts to was:

"Why am I the one being benched?"

There's a big difference between the two questions. The one I think Salah wanted to say, however, includes attacking his teammates, so it was never said. However, let's answer that question because the answer to the question Salah actually said is pretty simple: Liverpool players, with literally one exception, have been underperforming so it's justifiable to bench any of them. Now to the other one.

Salah might be entitled to go full Balotelli and ask, "Why me?" as he has the right to ask why he was benched three matches in a row. The question, however, belongs behind the scenes, to the manager.

Don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to players speaking in public, and if Salah is truthful about having no relationship with Slot, which the latter denies by the way, then there's no course but the media. Still, the question belonged to the Manager's office, Salah knew that as well that's why the question was the bland, almost naive question of "Why me?"

So, Salah had the right to ask the question, to a certain extent, now, let's answer it.

Who Played More Than Salah Anyway

Despite all the complaining, there are only four players who played more than Salah and those would be Szobozlai who has been easily Liverpool's best player and I think we all agree he definitely must stater, Gravenberch who might not be as good as he was last season but still deserves his spot, Virgil van dijk and Ibrahima Konate who simply don't have better replacements. Ibrahima Konate is hated by fans because of his contract and transfer speculation, so there's definitely no favouritism here as Slot would risk his reputation for him.

There are three names we could definitely say are performing better than Salah, Szoboszlai, Gravenberch, and Ekitike. The latter of which doesn't even have more minutes than Salah. Who else is there? Gakpo? Okay, maybe, let's consider it, both are Dutch after all

Although Gakpo might be worse than Salah offensively, I personally don't know, as they all suck in my eyes at the moment, but Gakpo is undoubtedly better than Salah defensively, as the Egyptian is the least defensively contributing forward in Liverpool, the first? Cody Gakpo. Plus Slot seems to be benching Frimpong with no problem. Let's just say it's inconclusive.

So, what do we know for certain? We know that the three matches prior to Salah's benching had Liverpool scoring once, conceding 10, and losing all three matches, and the three matches after the benching saw Liverpool scoring six, conceding four, and not losing a single match.

This might be the whole thing on the pitch, no? Salah himself admitted to saying to Slot, "Rest me defensively, and I will fix things offensively". When Liverpool needed a goal, Salah was brought on, so could it be that Slot was doing what Salah asked him to?

The strongest evidence is that this is a simple tactic. But if the numbers, the tactics, and even results all justify the decision, at least partially, then why did the reaction explode the way it did? Well, because the real problem, or problems, should I say, were somewhere else entirely. And that's what I will explore in the next part.