Mohamed Salah has scored 10 goals and set up five more in 15 games for Trabzonspor, and the club are three points behind Turkish Super Lig leaders Galatasaray. Those are the football facts. What is happening around them in a Black Sea port city of about 800,000 people is harder to measure and, by every account from the ground, considerably stranger.
When Salah flew in from Mykonos in August and stepped off the plane in Istanbul wearing Trabzonspor's burgundy and blue home shirt, that kit sold out almost immediately. Asked later the same day what he should wear for the formalities in Trabzon, he was told to wear the same thing. Club president Ertugrul Dogan suggested the black away kit instead. That sold out too.
A city that has rearranged itself around one player
Walk through Trabzon on a matchday and Salah's face is on everything. The walls inside the fishmongers. Scarves, keyrings, magnets and lighters outside the ground. Egyptian Nemes headdresses in club colours. One member of staff in the club shop jokes that the ground floor belongs to the Egyptian and the upper floor covers everything else.
"I went to the airport to see him in Istanbul and it was surreal," says supporter Nisa Dumangoz. "I still can't believe that he is one of us." Turkish journalist Hasan Tuncel puts it another way: nine of every ten fans in a shirt have Salah's name on the back, and the tenth has their own.
Season ticket sales jumped. The club have passed last year's entire merchandise revenue in three months. New flights have opened from Cairo, Dubai and Riyadh, because Trabzon is a far easier trip for supporters across the Arab world than Liverpool ever was, and tickets are easier to come by. A rock in the Trabzon highlands where Salah stopped for a photograph on a hike has been renamed Salahtasi and is now a tourist destination.
Why here, and not Istanbul
The money matters and nobody pretends otherwise: around £14.6m a year, plus 20% of official merchandise carrying his name. Besiktas were considered after the 2026 World Cup. After several conversations with Trabzonspor, Salah decided they offered what Istanbul could not, which was the space to concentrate on football.
He lives in nearby Yomra, where a street now carries his name, with his own security and a private chef. Teammate Paul Onuachu, once of Southampton, describes it simply enough. "Everyone wants to work with a star like Mohamed Salah. He adds so much and helps all of us and he contributes positively. I am grateful for him. It's a blessing to play with him."
Watch him now and the pace has dropped a notch from its peak. The touch and the quick feet have not, and neither has the instinct for arriving where the ball ends up, though his defensive work is limited in a way it was not expected to be at Anfield.
What this means for the club, and for Liverpool
Trabzonspor have won seven of their first ten, beating both Galatasaray and Besiktas along the way. For context on the scale of that, the Istanbul three of Galatasaray, Fenerbahce and Besiktas have 61 league titles between them. Trabzonspor have seven. "In Turkey, he is the biggest football star after Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo," says Kerim Tonyali of the supporters' group Gurbetci Gencler, and the club are becoming a second team for a lot of people well beyond Turkey.
Salah is 34 and wants to play at the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2030 World Cup. His Trabzonspor deal runs to 2028, and there is a growing belief among sources in the Middle East that Saudi Arabia will follow when it expires. Asked by BBC Sport whether he had a message for Liverpool supporters, he said hello, and smiled. Last season was his least prolific at Anfield; given how Liverpool have struggled for goals in the league since, it is difficult to argue they have replaced him.
Transfer context: Mohamed Salah, 34, joined Trabzonspor in the summer of 2026 on a two-year deal after terminating his Liverpool contract a year early. He earns around £14.6m per year plus 20% of official merchandise bearing his name, and has 10 goals and five assists in 15 games. Trabzonspor trail Super Lig leaders Galatasaray by three points.
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