Salah beats Messi and Ronaldo to Champions League award | VIDEO

The Egyptian winger has been named as the Champions League’s player of the week, and he’ll be picking up even more gongs this season

Mohamed Salah is at it again.

Liverpool’s man of the moment scored his fourth goal for the club in the 2-2 Champions League draw against Sevilla in midweek, with the Reds unable to hold on for all three points.

But despite Liverpool’s failure to win, Salah has been named as the Champions League’s player of the week by UEFA following an online vote, pipping the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi to the award despite the pair both notching braces.

It follows on from the Egyptian picking up Liverpool’s official Goal and Player of the Month gongs for August.

It was well deserved, despite the fact that Reds trio Trent Alexander-Arnold, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino could have all staked their claim to the prizes, reports the Liverpool Echo.

But it seems Salah’s chances of winning the three awards were a little stacked in his favour, and well, Liverpool fans will have to get used to seeing the Egyptian’s name on these trophies more often. And here’s why.

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Eyebrows were raised somewhat when Salah’s breakaway goal against Arsenal won the Reds’ Goal of the Month last week.

Alexander-Arnold grabbed his first Liverpool goal with a stunning free-kick away at Hoffenheim and Emre Can’s second goal in the return leg was so good, it had an animated Jurgen Klopp bellowing “this is football!” in the Anfield dugout.

Both were overlooked however as 52 per cent of the 32,325 votes went Salah’s way for his goal in the 4-0 win over Arsenal last month.

The jet-heeled Salah robbed Hector Bellerin of possession in the Reds’ half before racing unopposed the entire length of the Arsenal end of the pitch and calmly slotting past Petr Cech on August 27.

And while the goal was an eye-catching counter-attacking feat, it was essentially a one-on-one that the Egyptian speedster had to negotiate with a free run from the half-way line.

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Salah’s former club Roma tweeted out their congratulations to the 25-year-old last Tuesday and left Liverpool fans scratching their heads with the declaration that the Egypt international was set to win the Player of the Month award for the rest of campaign.

Such dominance is expected due to Salah’s fanatical following back in his homeland, where the population is around roughly 95 million.

“This is a country that is obsessed with football,” Egyptian football fan Omar Ashraf told the ECHO.

“It’s intrinsically linked to politics, culture, and feuds between different cities. Mohamed Salah is quite literally the most unifying Egyptian person in years.

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“Mohamed never played for El-Ahly or El-Zamalek, who are the big two in Egypt, before he left for Europe, so there was no reason for either of the massive contingents to turn on him.”

Salah’s arrival on Merseyside saw him take the throne as the Reds’ social media king – and he now has a whopping 5.1m followers on Instagram, 500k more than Liverpool Football Club themselves.

His Twitter account also holds 2.86m followers, nearly 700k more than Daniel Sturridge who is Liverpool’s second most-followed Twitter user.

Such a surge of interest from Egyptian supporters also became apparent at Stoke City when they signed Ramadan Sobhi last year.

To cope with the huge spike of support from north Africa, the Potters opened up social media accounts in Arabic specifically to cater for fans who were keen to keep up with Sobhi’s development at the club.

The club’s official Facebook account became inundated with supporters from Egypt eager to find out the latest on the attacking midfielder.

“Salah came from a very small village and made it all the way to the best leagues in the world,” Egyptian football expert Issam told the ECHO back in June.

“I think the same way people from the city of Liverpool relate to Steven Gerrard. Egyptians relate to Salah when he represents them in Europe. He just gets ‘it'”.

The news of Salah dominating public votes for the foreseeable future is unlikely to surprise supporters going forward then, it seems.

Article from: mirror.co.uk