Mohamed Salah did not want to cry. He made that clear before he started speaking.
Standing before his Liverpool teammates at the club’s final training session of the 2025-26 season, the Egyptian forward said he was trying to hold it together because the emotion would come the following day, at the match. Then he thanked every person in the room and told them he hoped to see them again soon.
What followed was less a goodbye than a challenge.
Nine years, one message
Andy Robertson spoke first or alongside Salah, depending on the account, and his tone was warmer and more plainly nostalgic. The Scottish left-back described their combined time at Liverpool as the best nine years of his life. He spoke about laughter and camaraderie and the specific pleasure of sharing a changing room with the group of people assembled in front of him. His farewell was generous and uncomplicated.
Salah’s was something else. He expressed genuine gratitude for his time at the club, said he had appreciated every moment and meant it. But he did not stop there.
He told his teammates what Liverpool feels like when it is winning and what it feels like when it is losing. The winning version, in his telling, is the best club in the world. The losing version is the worst. And then he told them, plainly, that they had better win next year.
A farewell shaped by a difficult season
The directness landed differently given the context of the 2025-26 season, which had not been Liverpool’s finest. Salah acknowledged the struggles without dwelling on them and used them as the foundation for what he wanted to leave behind: a standard, not just a memory.
His message was not a criticism of the players in the room. It was closer to the kind of thing a departing captain says when he genuinely believes the group in front of him is capable of more. He told them that winning things for Liverpool is the best feeling in football and that they should make sure to know that feeling themselves.
Robertson’s contribution gave the farewell its warmth. Salah’s gave it its weight.
What happens next for Liverpool
The immediate task facing the club was a final-day fixture against Brentford, with Champions League qualification still not mathematically guaranteed. A draw would secure at least fifth place, which carries a Champions League berth this season due to an additional allocation given to English clubs.
Liverpool sat three points behind Aston Villa heading into the final weekend, with a mathematical path to fourth place if results went their way. A sixth-place finish remained a distant but real possibility if Bournemouth produced a large win over Nottingham Forest.
The club would carry those calculations into its final match with Salah and Robertson watching from whatever vantage point comes after nine years of shared history at Anfield.
Both players addressed a group that has won league titles, European Cups and domestic trophies across the past decade. Whatever the future holds for Liverpool without them, the weight of what they built together was not lost on anyone in the room.
Salah made sure of that.
