Jurgen Klopp had huge praise for Mohamed Salah as the Liverpool forward came off the bench against Toulouse to score and break the record for most goals scored in European competitions by a Premier League player.
In doing so, Salah has surpassed Thierry Henry and is now on 43 goals for Liverpool in Europe since joining the club in 2017.
Having been introduced to the game with 20 minutes to play, Salah brilliantly sidestepped Toulouse defender Moussa Diarra in the 93rd minute to slam the ball in off the crossbar with his right foot to break yet another record for Liverpool.
His manager spoke about the legacy that Salah has already created on Merseyside and praised the maturity shown by the forward over the last few seasons.
Klopp said: “If you saw him on the bench, he wants to play always. But he also enjoyed watching the other boys and then coming on and scoring the goal and stuff like that.
“So, I’m really happy for him because, of course, he’s an adult man already for a long time now, but he is growing with the role he has for us and maybe with football in general.
“I didn’t know about the records, maybe he would have broken a few more records if I would be more into that because sometimes, I think I left him out when he could have broken one; which was not intentional.
“He’s such a good player and we appreciate him, and I think everybody will appreciate him even more after his career because we will all realise that we saw something really special.”
Klopp also spoke about Salah’s development since he arrived from Roma in 2017 and how he has adapted to the German’s way of thinking.
“The young Mo was a super-fast player who could go in behind”, Klopp said.
“He played at Roma together with [Edin] Dzeko who would control the ball or deflect it and Mo was always there.
“From his first day here, he had to do different things, he adapted extremely well but the playmaker in front of him then was probably more Bobby [Firmino].
“Now it’s slightly different, especially with Darwin [Nunez] when he’s playing because we’ve another speedy player up there so that has changed Mo’s position definitely and he’s smart enough to adapt to all these different things.”
