How is the relationship between Mohamed Salah and Jose Mourinho?

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Jose Mourinho is certainly one of the greatest managers of the modern era who enjoyed a lot of success with the likes of Porto, Chelsea, Real Madrid and Inter Milan. He also did not have the best of times at clubs like Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and AS Roma.

Regardless of his managerial style and controversial nature, the Portuguese remains the Special One. Throughout his career, Mourinho has also been the subject of criticism for a number of reasons and one of the biggest such reasons was his failure to get the most out of players like Mohamed Salah and Kevin De Bruyne among others.

While both players have gone on to become Premier League greats with Liverpool and Manchester City respectively, they were regarded as flops at Chelsea. While many Chelsea fans regret selling the duo and the club failing to realize their potential, Mourinho has always maintained that he was not at fault in either cases.

While many expect Salah and Mourinho to be at loggerheads with each other for their time spent together at Chelsea, that is not the case. As revealed by Salah himself, he has no hard feelings for Mourinho and the manager congratulated for his success when they met each other in games.

He said, as quoted by The Mirror: "I did meet him twice – in our match here at Anfield [Liverpool vs Manchester United] and in the other match in Manchester. He told me that he is happy with what I am doing. So, I thanked him. We didn't talk much; I just said 'hi' to him and he told me that he was happy for me."

While discussing his chemistry with Salah, he insisted that he was the one who signed Salah and he only loaned him out because the player did not have the patience to wait for his chances.

The recently sacked former Roma manager said: "People say that I was the one that sold Salah and it is the opposite. I bought Salah. But he came as a young kid, physically he was not ready, mentally he was not ready, socially and culturally he was lost and everything was tough for him.

"We decided to put him on loan and he asked for that as well. He wanted to play more minutes, to mature, he wanted to go and we sent him on loan to Fiorentina, and at Fiorentina, he started to mature. Chelsea decided to sell him, OK? And when they say that I was the one that sold him it is a lie. I bought him. I agreed to send him on loan, I thought it was necessary."

He added: “When people say 'you let Salah go’, I say exactly the opposite. I bought Salah. I was the one that said 'buy that guy’. He was going from Basel to Liverpool, and I made a fight. I made a war to make him come to Chelsea. Then comes the part to be a Chelsea player, you need to perform or have to wait. He didn’t want to wait and wanted to go on loan and then Chelsea at a certain point decided to sell. That was not me.”

Salah signed Mohamed Salah at Chelsea for £11 million from Basel in January 2014. He has been exceptional for Liverpool since his £34.3 million move from AS Roma in 2017. The Egyptian has scored 204 goals and produced 88 assists in 332 games for Jurgen Klopp's side to date.