Mohamed Salah joins Trabzonspor: Why the Egyptian chose Turkey over America and Saudi Arabia

Mohamed Salah's move to Trabzonspor was announced with a trailer, a crown emoji and the kind of spectacle that only Turkish football can stage. The 17-second clip, created with artificial intelligence, showed a pyramid surrounded by green trees before the image settled over Papara Park, the club's home stadium. It was posted just before 11:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday. There was no mystery about what it meant. Hours later, the club made it official. Salah, the Premier League's all-time leading foreign scorer, left Liverpool when last season ended and was now on his way to Turkey to sign for Trabzonspor, the fourth-biggest club in the country. What had started as weeks of uncertainty and a few days of rumors too strange to believe had turned into one of the most surprising transfers of the summer. Trabzonspor treated even the flight like an event. The club posted Salah's exact arrival time at Istanbul's Atatürk Airport on X. Fans who wanted to follow the journey in real time could do so on the club's YouTube channel - after taking out a paid subscription. In Turkey, they say titles are won at the airport, and the scene lived up to the saying: hundreds of supporters turned up to welcome the 34-year-old Egyptian before he traveled the roughly 1,100 kilometers to Trabzon, on the country's Black Sea coast. Salah was already in club colors before he reached the city. A video showed him posing in a Trabzonspor shirt on the plane, wearing the number 61. That is not his playing number - he will take the No. 10 shirt after his debut. But 61 means something in Trabzon. It is the city's postal code, the start of every license plate and a number locals will happily pay extra to have in their phone numbers. It is part of the city's identity, a quiet statement from a place used to being overshadowed by Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. The contract runs for two years. Trabzon, though, was not the only destination on the table. There were suitors in the United States and Saudi Arabia. According to The Athletic, Sporting Kansas City were the most active MLS club. The franchise is owned by Peter Mallouk, the son of Egyptian immigrants, and was prepared to match the salary Salah had earned at Liverpool. That would have made him the second-highest-paid player in MLS history, behind only Lionel Messi. The offer never came, however. After conversations, it became clear that Salah was willing to accept less money to stay in Europe. Saudi Arabia long felt like the more obvious move. Salah is the biggest Muslim star never to have appeared in the Saudi Pro League, and clubs there have chased him for years. He admitted in 2025 that he would have moved to the kingdom if he had not extended his Liverpool contract. 'I still have a great relationship with them, we keep in touch. Yes, we held negotiations,' he said on the Egyptian network ON Sports. This summer, though, the Saudi interest meant little to him. During last season's Champions League meeting between Liverpool and Galatasaray, players from the Turkish club asked Salah about his plans for life after England. His answer was simple: he had not made up his mind, but Saudi Arabia was not part of the plan. So why Trabzon? The move still looks sudden. A difficult final season at Liverpool may have hurt Salah's standing with Europe's elite clubs more than anyone realized. He still had a year left on his contract, which raises an obvious question: why not stay at Anfield for one more season? Instead, he chose a club where he will be the undisputed star and a symbol of something bigger. For a city that has spent decades in the shadow of Turkey's big metropolises, signing Mohamed Salah is not just a transfer. It is proof that Trabzon belongs on the map.