Djimi Traore cites ‘insane’ reason which could plausibly explain Mo Salah’s goalscoring decline
Djimi Traore has claimed that Mo Salah has been a victim of the ‘insane’ demands on elite footballers in the modern era and has attributed the Liverpool winger’s decline in goalscoring output this season to his vast workload finally catching up with him.
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In eight full seasons at Liverpool prior to this one, the Egyptian had never scored fewer than 23 goals for the Reds across all competitions. Two-thirds of the way through the current campaign, his tally is seven, a massive drop-off even when allowing for his absence due to the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).
Numerous pundits believe that the 33-year-old will depart for pastures new in the summer, while Pat Nevin witheringly opined that a plastic bag which briefly blew onto the pitch had ‘a bigger impact on the game’ than our number 11 in the win over Nottingham Forest last Sunday.
Traore: Huge workload is finally catching up with Salah
Amid such widespread castigation of Salah from the outside world, Traore has eschewed extremist soundbytes to instead offer the valid explanation that the sheer volume of football that the winger has played is now beginning to take its toll.
The 2005 Champions League winner said on talkSPORT Breakfast: “I think he still has some football in him. We all know football is very hard at the moment. You play with more intensity, the team knows you. I think he has played too many games, so maybe sometimes you need to rest him and keep him fresh. It’s hard to play that high intensity game when you start to get old.
“Mo Salah is a legend for Liverpool. What he’s done, I don’t think some players can catch him. The way he wants to end his career in Liverpool, it’s only about him, how he wants to do it.”
Traore added: “You know, football is insane at the moment. When you sit with the top players, when you play in a big club and you can play more than 75 games a year or something like that, I think it’s crazy.
“The demand is higher than before. You play every three days when you play in the Champions League, when you play in the league, and if you play for your national team as well. It’s hard to play at the same intensity all the time. You need to give the chance to some young players.”
Salah has barely paused for breath over the past nine years
Salah is renowned for his incredible durability – according to Transfermarkt, he’s been injured for only 20 games for club and country since joining Liverpool in June 2017 – and he’s been going almost non-stop throughout that time.
On top of the intensity of Premier League football and annual European commitments, the winger has also partaken in a World Cup and four different AFCONs with Egypt in his time as a Reds player, and the sheer volume of minutes he’s racked up over the past nine years is extraordinary.
| Liverpool mins played | Liverpool goals | Egypt minutes played* | Egypt goals* | |
| 2017/18 | 4,119 | 44 | 529 | 6 |
| 2018/19 | 4,342 | 27 | 659 | 6 |
| 2019/20 | 4,061 | 23 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020/21 | 4,178 | 31 | 180 | 2 |
| 2021/22 | 4,014 | 31 | 1,441 | 2 |
| 2022/23 | 4,301 | 30 | 433 | 4 |
| 2023/24 | 3,132 | 25 | 855 | 6 |
| 2024/25 | 4,501 | 34 | 435 | 3 |
| 2025/26 | 2,276 | 7 | 928 | 6 |
| TOTAL | 34,954 | 252 | 5,460 | 35 |
*Note: Summer fixtures with Egypt are attributed to the preceding season (i.e. Egypt games played in June 2018 are included in 2017/18 figures, etc.)
As the table above shows, Salah has accrued more than 40,000 minutes of football for club and country since joining Livepool. That’s equal to 673.5 hours, or just over 28 days when condensed into a single enormous chunk.
In that context, that it’s only taken until this season for that incomprehensible workload to finally catch up with him is remarkable, and even though he’s on course to play fewer minutes than usual in the current campaign, he’s still been a near-automatic starter under Arne Slot.
The burning question is whether his 2025/26 figures are merely a statistical anomaly, or the beginning of a sustained decline after so many years of excelling at the highest level.
The Liverpool head coach has been slow to trust in Federico Chiesa over the past 18 months, so we can expect Salah to start the majority of games from now until the end of May. What happens after that is another matter.
Whatever the future might hold, what is beyond any questioning in the slightest is that the Egyptian has been one of the greatest players to ever grace the hallowed turf of Anfield, and one season of a diminished output doesn’t change that whatsoever.
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