‘Ignorant’ Boehly has started a war over Salah
Robin Bairner
- 16 Sept 2022 12:16 BST
- 3 min read
Egyptian club Al Mokawloon have branded Chelsea owner Todd Boehly as “ignorant” for comments he made regarding Liverpool attacker Mohamed Salah.
Boehly cited the Egypt international star as among of group of players that Chelsea brought through their academy, but the 30-year-old actually made his professional debut in his homeland with Al Mokawloon before moving to Switzerland to play for Basel for two seasons.
This did not stop new Chelsea chairman Boehly from claiming the player as a Blues youth product at the SALT conference in New York this week.
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“We have one of the best academies in the world. If you look at what our academy has developed, our academy is Mo Salah, Kevin De Bruyne. More recently Tammy Abraham, Reece James, Mason Mount, Trevoh Chalobah,” he said, also overlooking the fact that De Bruyne played over 100 games for Genk before joining up at Stamford Bridge.
Indeed, both Salah and De Bruyne were effectively both cast out of the club after being considered not good enough. Between them, they played 16 league games. Both have subsequently gone on to superstardom at Liverpool and Manchester City.
Boehly shows a 'lack of understanding'
Nevertheless, Al Mokawloon have been left furious that they have been overlooked in the role they played in Salah’s development.
Mohamed Adel Fathi, who is on the club’s board of directors, responding by saying in a Facebook post: “What the new owner of Chelsea says shows a lack of understanding. Mohamed Salah is a source of pride for the Al Mokawloon Club and Egyptian and Arab football, and we are honoured that he is one of our sons. The whole world knows Salah's career and how he started with us, but it seems that the owner of Chelsea is the only person in the world who is ignorant of this information.”
Salah played 38 times for Al Mokawloon in the Egyptian Premier League and scored 11 times in that competition. In total, he turned out for his formative club 44 times and netted 12 goals.
