Mohamed Salah vs Harry Kane: The quiet rivals who might both be regretting big contract calls

It goes without saying, really, but the consistency of these two great goalscorers really is remarkable.

Since Salah arrived at Liverpool in 2017, he and Kane have been, by some distance, the two most prolific marksmen in the country. Between them, they have scored 358 club goals in that time, each of them have won three Premier League Golden Boot awards, and neither player has managed fewer than 24 in a single campaign. Each of them continue to set record after record, and both appear to love doing so.

They are, of course, very different players, but are kindred spirits in terms of their relentlessness, single-mindedness and importance to their respective teams.

And if you doubt that last point, just imagine where Liverpool and Spurs would be without them this season…

Salah and Kane have something else in common, too. Both have reached star status at their club, both have inevitably attracted interest from elsewhere, and as a result both have had big decisions to make in terms of their future.

Salah’s came last summer, when he reached the last year of his Liverpool contract. Despite fierce speculation, and a fair bit of posturing from the Egyptian’s agent, Ramy Abbas Issa, he opted to sign a new three-year contract, one which made him the highest-paid player in Reds history and which committed him to the club until just before his 33rd birthday.

Kane finds himself in a similar position this summer. The England captain signed a six-year contract back in 2018 and will enter the final 12 months of it in June. Spurs, naturally, would love him to extend, but as yet there is little sign that he will.

He has tried to leave before, of course, flirting quite openly with Manchester City a couple of years back. He might have become Tottenham’s all-time leading goalscorer since, but surely he regrets his failure to secure that move to the Etihad in 2021, especially as he watches Haaland, the striker Pep Guardiola eventually secured, tear things up.

One wonders, too, whether Salah has any regrets over his commitment to Liverpool, given the Reds’ demise this season. He has maintained his own scoring form - although he too has had patchy spells in terms of performance - but does he wonder what might have been, had he taken the plunge and joined Real Madrid or Paris Saint-Germain?

Maybe not. Sadio Mane’s struggles at Bayern Munich show the grass is not always greener. Salah stayed, continues to enjoy the love and support of the Anfield crowd, and continues to climb the Liverpool goalscoring charts too - Steven Gerrard, in fifth, is his next target.

And, unlike with Kane and Tottenham, there is enough reason to suspect that this season is an aberration, and that better times will return under Jurgen Klopp.

If they do, Salah will continue to play a key role.

Kane, on the other hand, has a huge call to make. He turns 30 in July and has, in terms of medals, nothing to show for a club career which has brought close to 300 goals.

Spurs, rudderless and managerless, don’t look like a club set up to fix that, and it would be no surprise if Kane attempted to leave again this summer. He knows, for example, that Bayern Munich are long-time admirers, while Manchester United's need for a striker is as clear as ever. PSG, too, would take him in a heartbeat. He has plenty of suitors.

Whether any of them could convince Daniel Levy, Spurs’ hard-nosed chairman, to sell is another matter. Levy still hopes to persuade his star man to sign a new deal, and would be loath to lose him on a free transfer next year.

But would Kane really make the same mistake again? He's given his career to Tottenham, but at what cost?

It would be a stretch to say that Salah and Kane, two quiet and generally reserved individuals, have any kind of enmity, but there is no doubt that a rivalry has developed between the two in recent years, as they have found themselves head to head at the top of the scoring charts.

Salah admitted recently that the reason he started taking penalties for Liverpool, in early 2018, was because Kane had moved ahead of him in the Golden Boot race, and you might remember a tweet from the Egyptian’s account when Kane, controversially, was awarded a goal by the Premier League having claimed a touch on Christian Eriksen’s free-kick against Stoke. “Wooooooow really?” wrote Salah, though he did eventually pip his rival to the Golden Boot.

Both have good records against each other’s team. Salah has scored eight times against Spurs, including in the 2019 Champions League final, and Kane has scored eight times against Liverpool, albeit only once in a victory.

Expect an embrace before kick-off on Sunday. But expect both to be determined to outshine the other when the whistle blows.

For six years, Salah and Kane have invariably found themselves leading the way in terms of Premier League goalscorers, but the arrival of a certain Norwegian has put both players in the shade this season.

With 49 goals, Haaland has already surpassed the best campaign either Salah or Kane has ever mustered, and with his strike against Arsenal this week he moved past Salah’s record for a 38-game Premier League campaign.

At 22, he represents the future, the kind of player who could break every record in the book if he were to stay fit. Salah and Kane will be acutely aware of that fact, and will have had their noses pushed out of joint this season, for sure.

How much it influences their future form, and in Kane’s case his next career move, remains to be seen.

And so to this weekend, and a game of considerable importance for both teams. Defeat for either side would spell the end of their top-four hopes, and a draw would probably do so for both. 

Liverpool’s form is better, the Reds winning each of their last three matches, while Spurs’ recent performances, in particular their 6-1 thrashing at Newcastle last weekend, have been that of a team without direction. Not surprising really, given they sacked Antonio Conte last month and that his interim replacement, Cristian Stellini, has since been dismissed.

It is left to Ryan Mason, the former midfielder, to try and rescue the campaign. Given Tottenham’s last win at Anfield came in 2011, and that their last victory of any kind in the fixture was in 2017, Mason’s second game is a daunting one.

Liverpool’s job is simple; they have to win every game and hope for a late-season collapse from those above them. Spurs actually did them a favour on Thursday, fighting back to steal a couple of points from fourth-placed Manchester United, but the gap remains seven points, and Erik ten Hag’s side have a game in hand too.

All in all, then, a far-from-ideal scenario for either side. And for Salah and Kane, too.

Praying for miracles and fighting over the Europa League scraps, after all, is not what two of the best goalscorers in the modern game should be doing at this stage of the season.