Mohamed Salah Pushes Back Against Egyptian FA Claims

The disagreement between the star and his federation is getting increasingly ugly.

Having worked in private to secure reforms to the way the Egyptian FA deals with player security and preparedness following a disappointing World Cup only to run up against resistance and even attempts to smear him publicly, Mohamed Salah’s public push back against his federation has intensified further today.

After Salah’s agent talked on Monday about requests for “guarantees regarding Mohamed’s wellbeing while with the national team” having been ignored, the Egyptian FA sought to cast Salah as a selfish and entitled—a star seeking preferential treatment compared to his teammates. Today the player hit back against that.

“I asked for more security for all players, not only for me,” Salah said in a series of videos posted to Facebook today in response to the Egyptian FA. “A lot of veterans in our national team have the same views. We had many disturbances at the team’s camp during our participation at the World Cup in Russia.”

Salah went on to cite security concerns such as players not being able to eat in the team hotel restaurant and being kept up by visitors until 6AM because, despite that the camp was meant to be closed, it was flooded by guests. He further took issue over the response to his concerns being to question his patriotism.

As part of that, Salah took offence at what he claims have been attempts by the Egyptian FA this week to cast his agent, Ramy Abbas, as a third-party and corrupting foreign influence—a Colombian speaking out against their nation’s representatives and someone seeking to sour Salah’s relationship with his country.

Salah ended by saying he hopes for the best, both with the Egyptian team and for his teammates. The situation, though, and whether Salah will be involved with his national team in the future remains very much uncertain with an important Africa Cup of Nations qualifier to be played on September 8th against Niger.

That much of Salah’s family remain in Egypt, meaning the potential for repercussions if he pushes too far—there have been rumours the government could attempt to press Salah into military service and unverified accounts of Egyptian FA members have made threats—could further complicate matters for him.

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com