Forget Ronaldo, Rooney or Henry: Salah is the Premier League's greatest-ever player

Mohamed Salah will leave Liverpool this summer as one of the greatest players to have played in the Premier League. He might even be the greatest.

Yes, Salah has earned his place at No. 1 in the Premier League's all-time list ahead of Wayne Rooney, Kevin De Bruyne, Ryan Giggs, Cristiano Ronaldo and even Thierry Henry.

Now, these lists are always subjective, and the mere suggestion that Salah places above Henry or De Bruyne will be met with a mixture of righteous indignation and ridicule by Arsenal and Manchester City supporters respectively. Manchester United fans will also dismiss any notion that club legends Rooney, Giggs and Ronaldo could have been eclipsed any player outside of Old Trafford.

To be classed as the greatest, a player must have achieved incredible success -- individually and with their team -- and done so over a sustained period. Many players can claim to have enjoyed success and longevity, but the best of them take their game to another level by being a team's catalyst, even providing the X factor to take their side to glory, and Salah ticks all of those boxes.

Still, so do Rooney, De Bruyne and Henry, while Giggs' greatness was down to his ability to perform at the top level for two decades, winning multiple trophies with United and evolving from a teenage winger to a creative midfielder. So how can we separate Salah from his iconic contemporaries?

Let's start with Rooney. The former United and England forward is often overlooked when the greatest Premier League player is debated, but he is certainly worth his place in the top bracket. He was a teenage superstar, making his debut at Everton aged just 16, before becoming the world's most expensive teenager when he joined United aged 18 in a £27 million transfer in 2004.

Rooney had it all -- pace, strength, game intelligence and the ability to score crucial and spectacular goals. He is one of only three players -- alongside Alan Shearer and Harry Kane -- to score more than 200 Premier League goals and he won 12 major trophies at Old Trafford, including five Premier League titles and a UEFA Champions League. But as good as Rooney was, he was a great player among other greats at United and Sir Alex Ferguson never quite relied as heavily on Rooney as Liverpool have on Salah. He was United's most important player for perhaps two seasons following the departure of Ronaldo in 2009, but Salah has never had anything other than top billing at Anfield.

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How about De Bruyne? For a decade, the Belgium midfielder dominated the Premier League with City, winning 16 major honors including six league titles and a Champions League. He was unquestionably the player that first Manuel Pellegrini, and then Pep Guardiola, really couldn't be without.

De Bruyne's total of 119 Premier League assists is bettered only by Giggs (162), and he shares the single-season record of 20 with Henry. He also scored an impressive 72 goals from midfield, including 15 in the 2021-22 season alone. But De Bruyne's fitness record during his decade at City denies him top spot as the league's best-ever. In 10 seasons, De Bruyne made 285 Premier League appearances for City, missing almost 100 games in that time -- the equivalent of 2½ seasons.

To be the greatest, you have to be available, and Salah's fitness record has been incredibly consistent since arriving at Liverpool in 2017. Liverpool have played 335 league games in that time and Salah has been unavailable for just 25 of them, with 19 of those due to Africa Cup of Nations duty with Egypt. Overall, Salah has missed just six Liverpool games in nine years because of injury.

Ronaldo was similarly robust during his first spell at United between 2003-2009, missing just eight games due to injury in that six-year spell. He was unquestionably a phenomenon during the formative years of his career at United. He won all the major honors at least once and was arguably the most important player in Ferguson's team during their three-in-a-row title success between 2007-2009, but Ronaldo scored fewer than 100 goals in that first spell and his real impact was only over three seasons, meaning he lacks the longevity of Salah.

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That leaves Henry, the Arsenal "Invincible" who often tops the "greatest Premier League player ever" lists for good reason.

Henry was a devastating goal scorer -- a player of grace, pace and breathtaking audacity. He was as cool off the pitch as on it, an advertising agency's dream, and his carefully cultivated image made him the face of the Premier League during the early-2000s. And although Arsène Wenger's great team was stacked with star performers including Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires and Ashley Cole, Henry was the irrepressible force that opponents truly feared.

Henry's 175 goals in 258 Premier League appearances puts him ahead of Salah in terms of goals-per-game -- Salah has 191 in 323 appearances -- but Arsenal were already a great side when Henry arrived. Wenger had led the Gunners to a league and FA Cup double just 12 months earlier, so the France international simply slotted into a winning machine.

Salah was different. He arrived at Liverpool when the club was approaching 30 years since its last league title in 1990 and when it had lifted just one trophy -- the 2012 League Cup -- in 10 years. He helped drag Liverpool to success, while Henry signed for a club that had already made that journey. And when Henry left the Gunners for Barcelona in 2007, he did so having failed to win the Champions League -- something Salah, De Bruyne, Ronaldo and Rooney were all able to do.

Salah was Liverpool's inspiration during their run to Champions League glory in 2019 with 10 goals and five assists as Jürgen Klopp's team made the club champions of Europe for the sixth time. He was also the key player during Liverpool's two Premier League title successes in 2019-20 and 2024-25, and now stands alongside Anfield greats Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard among the club's greatest-ever players.

Like Henry, Salah has registered a 20-goal Premier League season five times -- only Shearer, Kane and Sergio Agüero have done that more often. He is the only player to win both the PFA Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year awards three times.

So let's recap: Salah has won every major club honor worth winning at least once, he has maintained his peak form at Liverpool for just short of a decade, his fitness record is one step short of immaculate and he has scored goals -- in the biggest games, too -- ever since arriving at Anfield from AS Roma nearly nine years ago. So when he leaves the Premier League stage at the end of this season, Salah will have nobody ahead of him in the league's pantheon of greats.

He has been that good.

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