Mohamed Salah does not get nearly enough free kicks for his dominance in the attacking third.
Football is full of mysteries and unanswerable questions. Regrettably for clubs and their supporters, many of them revolve around referees and their decisions.
Many pundits and supporters were perplexed as to why Diogo Jota was awarded a penalty in Liverpool’s recent win over Crystal Palace, while a similar number were perplexed as to why Everton were not awarded one when Manchester City won 1-0 at Goodison Park last month. However, one issue has irritated Jurgen Klopp, and that is the level of protection Mohamed Salah receives from match officials.
“There is a statistic, I’m not sure who had it, but the statistic is that Mo is the one player who is fouled the least compared to other strikers,” he said ahead of Liverpool’s 2-0 win over Arsenal. “It’s mind-boggling how few fouls he receives when the referee doesn’t blow the whistle. So he has constant contact [from defenders] and is constantly falling and having to get back up, stuff like that “Klopp continued.
The statistics to which Klopp alluded were first published in an article in The Tomkins Times. It includes a graph for the 2019/20 season that compares the number of touches in attacking areas per 90 minutes in Europe’s big five leagues to how frequently they are fouled according to the referee.
However, the chart appears to have an error at first glance. Salah, who had the most touches in opposing penalty boxes in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain that season, is nowhere to be found.
But there is no misunderstanding. Liverpool’s number 11 does not appear on the chart because he receives so few fouls that the graph’s axis that accounts for them cannot accommodate him. Whereas standard outliers like Serge Gnabry and Bernardo Silva were fouled every 80 minutes, Salah was fouled every 120 minutes.
To be fair, the Reds’ title-winning season was the one in which Salah was awarded the fewest free-kicks, so his data for 2019/20 would appear worse on a chart than for previous seasons.
However, he has never come close to the average of a foul every 50 minutes, let alone led the way as a player with his attacking abilities should. The trend over the last five years is also mildly troubling.
Salah was awarded a free-kick every 73 minutes when he burst onto the scene in 2017/18, winning the Premier League Golden Boot with the most goals scored by any player in a 38-game season. This figure increased slightly to 81 the following season before skyrocketing to 120 in 2019/20.
Last season, it was 96, and after the first 29 games of 2021/22, Salah has been fouled (in the opinion of referees) every 108 minutes, giving him an overall average of one free-kick every 92 minutes with Liverpool.
Salah has been dominating defenders in the world’s best league for half a decade while receiving only one free kick per match on average. The numbers simply do not add up, no matter how you frame them.
But why has he (on average) been treated harshly by referees since his first season with the Reds? Do they believe he needed to be knocked down a notch or two? Have the officials accepted the conventional wisdom that he is a diver, despite the fact that he has received fewer yellow cards for simulation in the last five seasons than Everton did when losing 4-1 to Liverpool at Goodison Park in December?
