Interview: Mohamed Salah shares the secrets behind his elite mindset

NewsInterview: Mohamed Salah shares the secrets behind his elite mindset

Published
By Glenn Price

Share

Facebook Twitter Email WhatsApp LinkedIn Telegram

Mohamed Salah has gone in depth on the personal process he goes through in order to consistently perform at the highest level.

For the seventh season in a row at Liverpool, the Egyptian has exceeded the 20-goal mark in all competitions – something never achieved before in the club's rich history of prolific strikers.

One key aspect of the 31-year-old's mindset involves visualising the feats he wants to accomplish beforehand, so that when such opportunities arise, grasping them is already second nature.

You have to accept cookies in order to view this content on our site.

Watch on YouTube

Salah detailed: "I do it sometimes when I wake up. I sit at the edge of the bed or edge of a chair and sit straight, your back straight. You close your eyes and you visualise what you want to achieve or how you want to see yourself.

"You just visualise with the feeling. The feeling is the most important thing because the feeling is like energy. Once you visualise it, it will happen.

"But you need to work [for] it, not just visualise it and just lay down and wait and see. It takes a lot of courage as well to do it.

"I think when I come to a situation, I don't feel it happened for the first time. Because when you repeat it over and over and over again, when you go to the situation, your mind knows, 'Ah, I've been there before.' So I'm not stressed, I had that feeling before.

"That's why I'm telling you that the feeling is the most important thing. When you do things for the first, second or third time, it becomes easier with the time."

In addition to that, Salah underscored the importance of hard work and sacrifice in achieving all he has in his career so far.

"The only advice I could say is the easiest one, like, if you want something, go for it and you have to know it's going to be tough and there's going to be ups and downs," the No.11 continued.

"But if you want it to the extreme, you have to prepare that you have to sacrifice a lot of things to achieve it. Otherwise, it won't happen.

"I just say if you really want to improve on something, just do it every day – five, 10 minutes. It sounds easy but trust me, it's not going to be easy if you do it every day. Do it every day and you will see the result at the end.

"Close your eyes and do whatever you want to do in your imagination or whatever you want to make yourself feel or whatever you want to have that feeling in your mind – gratitude or whatever – and you will see the difference with the time."

Salah has excelled in numerous high-pressure situations on the way to lifting club football's biggest prizes.

As the Reds' chase for the Premier League and Europa League this season continues, the forward explained what helps him handle such tension in often unsettling environments, instead of letting it overwhelm.

He said: "I think the main thing for me is everybody is nervous, it's not just me, everybody feels stressed. So the main thing is to control your emotions in that time.

"The main problem for us as a player is we just try to run away from that emotion, try to really feel that it's not real or something. But at the end of the day, if you accept it and you impress it and you deal with it in the best possible way, that's how you're going to handle this situation.

"Of course I do a lot of yoga and also meditation – it helps a lot. But you need to accept your emotions."

Mohamed Salah forward
Mohamed Salah
View Profile
Published

Share

Facebook Twitter Email WhatsApp LinkedIn Telegram