Ryan O’HanlonApr 28, 2026, 04:30 AM ETCloseRyan O’Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He’s also the author of “Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution.”Follow on XMultiple Authors
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play1:50Laurens: The winner in PSG vs. Bayern will be the team who presses betterThe ESPN FC panel look ahead to the UCL semifinal first leg between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich.
Has Mohamed Salah played his last game for Liverpool? (1:30)ESPN FC’s Steve Nicol believes Mohamed Salah may have played his last game for Liverpool after coming off injured in their 3-1 victory over Crystal Palace. (1:30)
Yamal ruled out for rest of seasonAlex Kirkland reports on Lamine Yamal being ruled out for the remainder of the season.
Do USMNT have a problem vs. European teams?The ‘Futbol Americas’ crew discuss the USMNT’s form going into the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Laurens: The winner in PSG vs. Bayern will be the team who presses betterThe ESPN FC panel look ahead to the UCL semifinal first leg between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich.
The ESPN FC panel look ahead to the UCL semifinal first leg between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich.
Leboeuf: Arteta will be to blame if Arsenal don’t win the titleFrank Leboeuf says mistakes from Mikel Arteta have allowed Manchester City back into the Premier League title race.
Frank Leboeuf says mistakes from Mikel Arteta have allowed Manchester City back into the Premier League title race.
Laurens: The winner in PSG vs. Bayern will be the team who presses betterThe ESPN FC panel look ahead to the UCL semifinal first leg between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich.
The ESPN FC panel look ahead to the UCL semifinal first leg between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich.
2. Barcelona sign Timo Werner and win the 2018 Champions League
4. MLS never signs a broadcast deal with Apple — and the league is more popular than ever
5. Jesse Marsch is the USMNT manager at the 2026 World Cup
6. Mohamed Salah replaces Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid …
8. Manchester City won five straight Premier League titles by massive margins …
10. Vinícius Júnior leads Liverpool to their first-ever Premier League title
11. The 2025-26 Premier League season is widely considered the best of all time
Depending on the severity of his hamstring injury, Mohamed Salah has played somewhere between his last and his fifth-to-last game for Liverpool.
If you had to pick one person who most represents the modern era of Liverpool, it would be Salah. Mainly because he is the only one who has always been there. Since joining from Roma in 2017-18, the Egypt winger has played 26,124 Premier League minutes — more than everyone other than Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and his teammate James Tarkowski. Among forwards, the next closest is Son Heung-Min, with 5,000-plus fewer minutes.
Then, of course, there are all the goals and assists: 191 and 92, respectively — both more than anyone else since 2017-18. The 283 combined goal contributions is 100 more than Son’s second-best tally of 183 over the same stretch. Salah averaged 31 goals+assists over his nine seasons in the Premier League; over those nine seasons, only seven other players reached his average output even once.
It’s hard to imagine modern soccer without Salah. It’s near-impossible to imagine modern Liverpool without Salah.
As had been whispered for a number of years before it eventually became public, Liverpool very nearly didn’t sign Salah. Jürgen Klopp preferred Borussia Dortmund’s Julian Brandt, while the team’s data-driven front office was convinced that Salah was a future superstar. This moment, I think, defines why Liverpool went on to be so successful over the next six years.
Klopp was one of the most famous soccer personalities in the world, and he wanted a young star from his old club. At most places, that kind of signing happens automatically; instead, Klopp listened to a bunch of people who had never played professional soccer before, argued with them, and eventually accepted that they were right.
The result: They won everything, driven by arguably the best attacker the Premier League has ever seen. But what would the result have been if Klopp had put his foot down or Salah decided he didn’t want to go back to England? Inspired by a similar butterfly-effect piece from my colleague Zack Kram, here are the 11 biggest differences in this potential alternate reality.
The plan was for Liverpool to play with all four: Salah, Sadio Mané, Roberto Firmino and Philippe Coutinho. But then Paris Saint-Germain doubled the world-record transfer fee to sign Neymar, reset the established order of European soccer, and blasted a hole through Barcelona’s plans for the future.
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In our alternate reality, Brandt arrived at Liverpool and was … fine. He turned into a younger version of Adam Lallana — a versatile squad player, but not a needle-moving phenom. So, losing Coutinho was not an option; Liverpool just wouldn’t be able to score enough goals with an attack of Mane, Firmino and Brandt.
Rather than diversifying their target list, Barcelona got fixated on Coutinho and never really had a backup plan. Unable to pry any other ready-made stars from other big clubs in Europe at the last second, they panicked and signed one of the cheaper, backup options they’d established for Dembele: up-and-coming RB Leipzig forward Timo Werner.
But in the alternate reality: With Werner’s speed in behind, Barcelona are able to sit back in the second leg against Roma and counter-attack. Rather than coughing up their 4-1 lead, they win 3-2 in Rome. Liverpool’s defense isn’t strong enough to hang with Barça over two legs in the semifinal, and that set up an El Clasico Champions league final against Real Madrid.
Alex Kirkland reports on Lamine Yamal being ruled out for the remainder of the season.
Barcelona easily dispatched a Madrid side whom they finished 17 points clear of in LaLiga, but the final wasn’t without consequence. Already down 2-0, Sergio Ramos got tangled up with Werner, landed on the German forward, and seemed to wrench his arm as his bodyweight crashed onto Werner’s shoulder capsule. Werner’s shoulder broke apart under the impact, and he was never the same player after the final.
Remember that whole financial crisis that ultimately led to a news conference where Sergiño Dest wore a knockoff Chicago Bulls uniform as he watched Messi, through tears, tell us that he had to leave the club he has played for ever since he was a child? In our alternate reality, this does not happen.
Werner cost the club just a third of what Coutinho did, and instilled a tiny bit more prudence and trust in youth. They also never signed Antoine Griezmann — remember that weird year? — so although the club still did hit COVID-driven financial problems, they had just enough money available to keep paying Messi while making cuts elsewhere.
Although, in this new reality, Messi never comes to MLS, the league still continued its steady growth. The quality of play continued to improve, the league continued to offer opportunities to young players from all across the Americas, and bigger clubs continued to attract a higher level of aging superstars than it had in the past. Most importantly, though, people were able to continue watching the games without an Apple TV subscription.
Without having to chase Salah for the Golden Boot in 2017-18, Harry Kane easily wins the award and doesn’t push himself through an ankle injury before the 2018 World Cup. He never has the mid-career dip that happened in real life. With Kane, Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen and Son all at the peak of their powers, Spurs destroy Barcelona with their physical, in-your-face press. They won the 2019 Champions League final.
This sets Mauricio Pochettino on a different career path that never leads to the United States Soccer Federation. Worried that it won’t be able to find a suitable replacement if it goes wrong, the USSF doesn’t rehire Gregg Berhalter in the summer of 2023. Instead, they bring in Jesse Marsch.
The ‘Futbol Americas’ crew discuss the USMNT’s form going into the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Liverpool’s move for Salah may have been the last of its kind: a cheap deal for a superstar hiding in plain sight. There were two silly things that prevented the wider soccer world from realizing just how good Salah already was while he was at Roma.
The first: his “failure” with Chelsea. Although the same thing happened to Kevin De Bruyne, the fact that Jose Mourinho didn’t want Salah while he was at Stamford Bridge created this idea that Salah wasn’t equipped to perform in the Premier League.
I doubt we’ll ever see another signing where a player had all the objective markings of a superstar and was acquired for the cost of a squad player.
In our alternate reality, Salah stayed at Roma for another year and had his breakout season in Italy instead of England. He hit 25 goals and 15 assists in Serie A, as Roma dethroned Juventus for the first time in seven years atop Serie A. Not only had the world recognized him as a superstar, but his marketing appeal was also undeniable. When Ronaldo left for Juventus in the summer of 2018, everyone knew what was going to happen next: Madrid broke their club record to sign Salah from Roma.