'We Loved Him': Why Mo Salah Will Always Get a Warm Welcome Back in Rome

The first serious test of Mohamed Salah's mettle as a Roma player arrived two months into the 2015-16 season, and he passed it with (almost) flying colours.

Roma were playing away to league leaders Fiorentina, where Salah had spent the second half of the previous season after signing on an 18-month loan deal from Chelsea. He had refused to return to Fiorentina in order to move to Roma, and the fans of La Viola were not happy.

Fiorentina's supporters pledged to turn the Stadio Artemio Franchi into a bear pit for Salah's return and brought with them some 5,000 whistles. Each time Salah touched the ball, a shrill cacophony rained down upon him from the ultras in the Curva Fiesole. But in the sixth minute, the stadium fell silent.

After picking up the ball wide on the Roma right, Salah exchanged passes with Miralem Pjanic and then let fly with a glorious effort from just inside the box that curled around the outstretched 6'6" frame of goalkeeper Ciprian Tatarusanu and into the net.

Many players would have reacted by rubbing the goal in the faces of the tormentors in the stands—a shushing gesture, perhaps, or a provocatively cupped ear—but not Salah. As his white-shirted team-mates swamped him in celebration, he raised both hands above his hand in a gesture of apology.

"He remained so concentrated and cold," Angelo Mangiante, who reports on Roma for Sky Sport Italia, told B/R. "That's the kind of match when you look at a player and think, 'That player is a champion.' Otherwise he wouldn't have survived in a stadium like that."

Andrew Medichini/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press

Though Roma would go on to win the match 2-1, sending them to the top of the table, Salah's night ended in disappointment. Booked after bundling over Fiorentina defender Facundo Roncaglia in the 87th minute, he reacted by dismissively flinging his hand into the air and was immediately shown a second yellow card by referee Daniele Orsato.

The home fans, naturally, enjoyed Salah's premature departure, but he had already made his presence felt. It was his fifth goal in nine Serie A matches with Roma, and he would end the campaign with 14, notably helping himself to a brace in a 4-1 win over Fiorentina in the return fixture. Roma's fans had seen what the Egyptian winger was capable of during his exciting four-month stint in Florence, and he did not disappoint.

"When Roma bought him from Fiorentina, the fans were really, really happy," says Camilla Spinelli, who works for Roma's in-house radio station, Radio Roma. "Every characteristic of his football had already been on show at Fiorentina. He had two amazing years at Roma."

Salah's second season at Roma, who paid Chelsea around €15 million to make the move permanent, was spectacular. He scored 15 goals and laid on 11 assists in Serie A, making him one of only three players to reach double figures in both domains, and helped attacking partner Edin Dzeko to compile a league-leading tally of 29 goals. Roma plundered a club-record 90 goals in Serie A and amassed 87 points—another club record—as they chased champions Juventus all the way to the line.

Luciano Spalletti, who had succeeded Rudi Garcia as coach in January 2016, encouraged Salah to play with his head up, and under the Italian's stewardship, he developed into a much more well-rounded footballer. His darting runs from the halfway line repeatedly tore opposition defences to shreds.

"He was fast and dynamic, in a static league. And not only was he fast, he went at full speed with the ball perfectly under control," says Oscar Svensson, a Roma fan and blogger. "It's hard to accurately describe how big a contrast that was to the entire league, and the problems he caused all the other 19 teams in it."

Mangiante, who has been reporting on Roma since 1999, puts Salah alongside Gabriel Batistuta, Francesco Totti and Brazil midfielders Falcao and Toninho Cerezo as one of the best five or six players to have played for the club in the last 35 years.

Like many of Roma's players, Salah lived in Casal Palocco, an affluent suburb south-west of Rome's city centre, 25 minutes by car from the club's Trigoria training centre. On away trips, he roomed with Greek defender Kostas Manolas, one of the players with whom he shared a hug in the Anfield tunnel ahead of Liverpool's 5-2 win over Roma in last week's Champions League semi-final first leg. By the start of his second season, he felt confident enough to conduct some interviews in Italian.

Salah's game-changing ability and off-pitch professionalism quickly earned him the respect of changing-room monuments Totti and Daniele De Rossi. Totti recently described Salah as "one of the best players in the world."

Sadly for Roma's supporters, they have had to watch Salah's metamorphosis into a potential Ballon d'Or winner from afar. Roma were obliged by UEFA's financial fair play regulations to balance their books by June 30 last year, and a week before the deadline, they accepted an offer for the 25-year-old from Liverpool for an initial fee of €42 million. Six weeks later, Paris Saint-Germain paid Barcelona €222 million for Neymar and the transfer market exploded.

"Roma sold Salah for €42 million, but now on the market, Salah is like [Philippe] Coutinho, who cost €160 million," says Mangiante.

"The great regret is that everyone knows Salah could have been one of Roma's greatest players. You can build the future of Roma starting with his name. Why did they have to sell him? That's the question every hour in Rome from the supporters. Because with him, they could have won Serie A."

Although Roma's fans expressed dismay over Salah's exit, his professionalism and respectfulness meant he departed on good terms.

"We have good memories of Salah. We loved him. Nobody was angry at him when he left," says Daniele Manusia, a Roma fan and editor-in-chief of the sports website L'Ultimo Uomo.

"Normally when an ex-player plays well or scores against you, you are sad and angry. If Pjanic, for example, curled two free-kicks into the net against Roma [he left for Juventus in 2016] and provided two assists, we'd be after his life. But Salah will always be very welcome. He was always a very professional player, and he was always very kind towards Roma's supporters."

Rui Vieira/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press

Blogger Svensson admits to mixed feelings. "I loved Salah and watching him play every week. He seems like an affable person who's easy to like, and I want him to do as well as possible," he says. "But despite all of that, I still feel bitterness. Roma had to sell before June 30, and Liverpool's offer for him was the only realistic option. I get that, but Roma will forever have been on the wrong side of this deal and that sucks a tiny little bit."

Salah's remarkable reintroduction to English football has inevitably made for bittersweet viewing for Roma's fans, yet Manusia says they have drawn solace from the knowledge that he has proved himself to be every bit as good as they thought he was:

"We are actually very happy for him. We knew he was a good player. There were fans from other clubs—Juventus, Napoli, Inter—who said that Salah was overrated and wasn't that good a player. They thought he was a one-dimensional player who could only run with the ball and wasn't very skilful in front of goal. But we knew."

Salah will return to Stadio Olimpico on Wednesday for the first time since his last game in Roma's colours, a 3-2 win over Genoa on the final day of last season. Having scored two and created two of the five goals that allowed Liverpool to plant one foot in the Champions League final, he will be a marked man, but those who closely followed his time in the Eternal City are confident he will receive a positive reception.

"He was always very kind with the fans, and when a player shows love, the Roma fans remember it," says Spinelli. "I think there will be huge affection for him at Stadio Olimpico."

Mangiante adds: "The Roma fans are so strange. When you leave, even if you did well at Roma, when you come back, the people whistle you. But I'm 100 per cent sure that the people in the stadium will applaud Mohamed."

Warmth, then, is the forecast, rather than whistles. And even if it is whistles, it takes more than that to put Mo Salah off his stride. Just ask Fiorentina.