Liverpool and Roma Disagree Over Final Salah Transfer Fee

The deal is done and Mohamed Salah is Liverpool’s newest signing, but Roma and Liverpool aren’t in agreement when it comes to how much Liverpool actually paid for him. According to Roma, the base fee is just shy of £35M with a potential further £4M in add-ons.

Liverpool, though, are claiming via The Echo that the numbers being reported by sources with ties to Roma represent the fee paid in Euros—that the base fee is just shy of €35M (or around £30.8M) and could rise as high as €39M (or around £34.3M). Either would represent a bargain.

If the figures being reported by Liverpool are true, though, it represents a steal and further means the club barely moved on their initial offer of a £28M base fee plus add-ons. Given Roma were initially asking for €50M (£44M) for Salah, it’s clear why they would welcome any fee confusion.

In the current inflated transfer market, a £30.8M base fee for a player who scored 19 goals and 15 assists in one of Europe’s top leagues, a 25-year-old international just entering into his prime years, would stand as a quite ridiculous bargain. It would be the kind of bargain Roma wouldn’t want to admit to their fans or other clubs of having made.

It’s one they may have to have, though, given their need to comply with FFP regulations by making a major sale by the end of the month. It’s one that, if the reports from Liverpool’s side are correct, stands as an even bigger transfer win for the club and a welcome salve to the recent Virgil van Dijk embarrassment.

Either fee, for a player with Salah’s scoring rate in the current market, would at least be a good deal from a Liverpool point of view. It looks, though, like the club may have capitalised on Roma’s need to sell and the fact they were the only serious suitor to get rather more than a good deal.