Troy Deeney isn’t backing down from one of football’s more contrarian takes. The former Watford striker in an interview restate his long-held view that Mohamed Salah, despite years of elite output at Liverpool, still doesn’t deserve the “world-class” label in his eyes.
Softfootball gathered that Deeney was upfront about the subjectivity of his own stance from the outset. He said:
My argument has always been that I just don’t think he’s world-class. But his goals that he scores, he scores an unbelievable amount of goals, he’s highly effective, but that’s just my opinion.
He even anticipated the response it might get from Salah himself:
He’s probably going to turn around and say, ‘Who is Troy?,’ and fair play to him, but that’s my opinion.
The numbers make his case a hard sell regardless. 44 goals in his debut Liverpool season alone, a Champions League and Premier League winner, two-time African Footballer of the Year, and a Puskas Award to his name.
