"He would ask for a three-year contract, and the total cost would be 90 million Euros." That's Fenerbahce's newly elected president Aziz Yildirim, already drawing up the paperwork in his head before Salah has packed a single box at Anfield.
Salah's exit from Liverpool this summer is confirmed. After 374 goals and assists combined across eight years, multiple Premier League titles, a Champions League, and a transformation of English football's left flank, he's leaving. The debate now is purely about where he lands next.
Fenerbahce's case is stronger than it looks
Yildirim ran his presidential campaign partly on the promise of signing Salah — which either reads as bold ambition or wild electioneering, depending on your cynicism level. Now that he's won, he's doubling down. "If he is our urgent need, we will sign him," he said, leaving it to the football committee to decide.
More telling is what Ertan Torunogullari — previously involved in negotiations — has said about those talks: "He was very keen on coming to Türkiye. The meetings he had with us were extremely positive. We had established common ground with him on many issues, including his salary."
That's not a club talking themselves up for the cameras. That's someone describing a deal that was closer than most people realised. Fenerbahce's any-time title odds in the Süper Lig would shift dramatically with Salah in Istanbul — and so would their European group stage potential.
The European route is narrow
Football finance analyst Kieran Maguire has been blunt about the wage problem: "Only a handful of European clubs could afford his wages. If he was to move in Europe, then the realistic options are PSG, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona — but the proposition would have to be attractive enough for him."
That's a short list, and three of those clubs already have their forward lines sorted. PSG are rebuilding post-Mbappé, but whether Salah at 33 is the direction they're heading is another question entirely. Real Madrid won't move for him at this stage of a rebuild. Barcelona's finances make any big deal structurally complicated.
Saudi Arabia and MLS remain in the background, as they have been for two years now. Saudi clubs have the money but Salah has consistently shown little urgency to follow the path Benzema and Neymar took.
Fenerbahce's pitch — a three-year deal worth £77m in total — places them as a credible option rather than a fallback. Whether that's enough depends on what Salah actually wants from this final chapter. And right now, the people who've sat across the table from him are saying he was "very keen."
