LIVERPOOL: When AS Roma agreed to sell Mohamed Salah to Liverpool last June they could well have anticipated that the Egyptian would go on to be a big success with the Premier League club.

What they surely didn’t expect would be that Salah and Liverpool would stand between them and a place in the Champions League final.

But in Tuesday’s Champions League semi-final, first leg at Anfield Roma’s primary task will be to stop the prolific Salah from adding to his impressive 41 goals in all competitions.

The Italian side are a surprise arrival in the last four of Europe’s premier club competition after a stunning comeback against Spanish giants Barcelona in the last round.

Liverpool pulled off their own surprise as Salah, voted Player of the Year by England’s Professional Footballers Association (PFA) on Sunday, scored in both legs of his team’s 5-1 aggregate quarter-final win over Premier League champions Manchester City.

Juergen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, expects Roma’s defenders to give Salah an early reminder, if any were needed, that friendships end once the players are on the field.

“I am pretty sure the Italian defenders are famous for not having friendly games, so I think Mo will feel early in the game that they are not his team-mates anymore and then he can strike back in a football way,” the German said.

Salah left Roma for Liverpool for an initial 42 million euros (37 million pounds, $52 million). In an offseason when the Premier League spent record sums and Neymar would soon go on to change the sport’s financial landscape by joining Paris St Germain for 222 million euros, Salah’s transfer wasn’t unnoticed but was hardly agenda-setting.

It has proved a significant piece of business.

For Roma, it helped balance the club’s books, erasing a big chunk of its deficit at a time when the Italian side was facing potential financial fair play penalties from UEFA.

“Anyone who understands a bit of this business knows that that’s like having a sword pointed at your neck,” said Ramon “Monchi” Rodriguez, Roma’s director of sport and essentially their mastermind in the transfer market.

Selling Salah was a wrench. He combined for 26 goals (scored 15, set up 11) in Serie A in the final season of his 18 months in the Italian capital, second only to Jose Callejon of Napoli. He had quickly become a fans’ favourite. The then-Roma coach, Luciano Spalletti, had helped develop Salah’s all-around game so he was more than just a speedy winger, but an efficient and creative one, too.

As it turned out, $50 million was a bargain as Salah has blossomed into a goalscoring machine very few saw coming at the start of the season.

“It wasn’t like a lot of other teams than Liverpool were banging down the door,” Roma’s American co-owner James Pallotta told the BBC’s World Football programme. “I think today a lot of teams are kicking themselves in the head that they didn’t take a closer look at him.”

In a nomadic career since moving to Europe as a 19-year-old, Salah was known for his pace and dribbling ability in spells at Basel and Fiorentina either side of a short time at Chelsea before moving to Roma.

However, the capability he has shown time and again this season to keep a cool head in front of goal used to so often fail him.

Liverpool manager Klopp has run out of superlatives to describe Salah but deserves credit for finding a way to get the best out of him.

Pallotta says that Klopp’s system of a fluid front three also including Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane is what has brought the best out of Salah, who had to feed off the target man figure of Edin Dzeko at Roma.

“He’s obviously had an incredible year. I think the coach there has clearly figured out how best to utilise him, using him in a different position I would say to Roma because you’ve got Dzeko in the middle.”

The Italian side, now under coach Eusebio Di Francesco, have somehow managed to prosper without Salah, getting to the last four of Europe’s top competition for the first time since reaching the final in 1984. The opponent that year: Liverpool.

Di Francesco has tried several players in Salah’s role as an attacking winger on the right, with varying degrees of success: Gregoire Defrel, Stephan el Shaarawy, Gerson, Patrik Schick, Diego Perotti, Alessandro Florenzi and even Radja Nainggolan.

However, it is 20-year-old Cengiz Under who is proving a revelation in that role in the second half of his first season at the club.

Under struggled initially after his move from Istanbul-based side Basaksehir for 13 million euros ($16 million), and was not involved in any goals in his first 14 matches with Roma. Yet he scored six goals in February and March, and returned from injury by coming off the bench in the second leg of the quarter-finals against Barca and delivering the corner that set up Kostas Manolas’ goal to seal a 3-0 win and historic comeback from 4-1 down in the first leg.

“Imagine where Roma would be if they still had Salah,” Klopp recently said. Maybe in financial chaos and with UEFA-imposed limits on its wage bill, transfer spending and squad size in the Champions League.

Salah now is potentially worth four times more than Liverpool bought him for.

“I feel he is in a great place, with a great set of lads,” Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson said. “He is going in the right direction with us.” That direction is potentially the Champions League final in Kiev on May 26. Unless his old club can hatch a plan to stop him.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2018