Do we like them?Do we like Mohamed Salah?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record, real charity and no harmful words found, but a gap on LGBTQ+ issues and a thin read of some disputes keep it from a 9.
Salah is from Nagrig, a village in Egypt's Nile Delta, and he never really left it behind. He set up a charity there in 2017, the year he arrived at Liverpool, and it has funded things like an ambulance centre. A bloke who goes from a Delta village to Anfield and keeps paying for the home town's ambulances is a good start.
The biggest story of his Liverpool years isn't a scandal, it's an effect. A 2019 Stanford Immigration Policy Lab study found hate crimes in Merseyside fell about 19 per cent after he signed, compared with the expected rate, and anti-Muslim tweets from Liverpool fans roughly halved. The authors argued his prominence helped cause that, though it's one study and the effect is a correlation they interpret, not a certainty.
On the harm test, the honest answer is that there isn't much on the record to weigh. A viral claim that a Spanish paper said he'd be sanctioned for opposing homosexuality was checked by Misbar, which found no such reporting. I found nothing from him on trans people, women's rights or the climate either way, so this is a pass on what he's done, not a champion's pass on what he's said.
The Gaza moment is where he's been most public. In October 2023, after criticism from some Arab fans over his silence, he posted a video calling for aid to get in and the killing to stop, saying “Humanity must prevail.” He also made a donation to the Egyptian Red Crescent, according to reports. How you read that depends on whether you wanted more or less from a footballer, but it was a call for aid and civilians, not for hate.
The recent stretch has been messy on the pitch rather than off it. He left Liverpool at the end of 2025-26, and Egypt lost to Argentina in the World Cup in a game their camp felt had refereeing calls against them. Salah responded with a message promising a fresh start for Egyptian football, which is about as diplomatic as you can get after a loss like that.
The gaps are worth saying out loud. Egyptian outlets have reported a dispute with a former lawyer over fees in a Cairo court, and I couldn't open that reporting to say where it stands, so I'm leaving it at that. Nothing I could read showed him mistreating teammates or staff, and the denials from Egypt's FA about substitution rumours are football gossip, not conduct.