Why Salah beats Ronaldo, Henry as Premier League’s greatest

Mohamed Salah will leave Liverpool this summer as one of the greatest players to play in the Premier League. It could even be THE the biggest.

Yes, Salah has earned his place at No.1 on the Premier League’s all-time list ahead of Wayne Rooney, Kevin De Bruyne, Ryan Giggs, Cristiano Ronaldo and even Thierry Henry.

Now, these lists are always subjective, and the mere suggestion that Salah places above Henry or De Bruyne will be met with a mixture of righteous indignation and ridicule from Arsenal and Manchester City supporters respectively. Manchester United fans will also reject any notion that club legends Rooney, Giggs and Ronaldo could have been overshadowed by any player outside Old Trafford.

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To be ranked among the best, a player must have achieved incredible success – individually and with his team – over an extended period of time. Many players can claim to have enjoyed success and longevity, but the best of them take their game to another level by being the catalyst for a team, even providing the X-factor to lead their side to glory, and Salah ticks all of those boxes.

Yet so did Rooney, De Bruyne and Henry, while Giggs’ greatness lay in his ability to perform at the highest level for two decades, winning multiple trophies with United and evolving from teenage winger to creative midfielder. So how can we separate Salah from his iconic contemporaries?

Let’s start with Rooney. The former United and England striker is often overlooked during debates about the Premier League’s greatest player, but he certainly deserves his place in the top tier. He was a teenage superstar, making his Everton debut aged just 16, before becoming the world’s most expensive teenager when he joined United at 18 in a £27 million move in 2004.

Rooney had it all: speed, strength, playing intelligence and the ability to score crucial and spectacular goals. He is one of only three players – alongside Alan Shearer and Harry Kane – to have scored more than 200 Premier League goals and he has won 12 major trophies at Old Trafford, including five Premier League titles and one UEFA Champions League. But as good as Rooney was, he was a great player among other greats at United and Sir Alex Ferguson never relied on Rooney as much as Liverpool relied on Salah. He was United’s most important player for perhaps two seasons after Ronaldo’s departure in 2009, but Salah was never given anything other than the headliner at Anfield.

And De Bruyne? For a decade, the Belgian midfielder dominated the Premier League with City, winning 16 major honors including six league titles and one Champions League. He was without a doubt the player that Manuel Pellegrini, and then Pep Guardiola, really couldn’t do without.

De Bruyne’s Premier League tally of 119 assists is only bettered by Giggs (162), and he shares the single-season record of 20 with Henry. He has also scored an impressive 72 goals from midfield, including 15 in the 2021-22 season alone. But De Bruyne’s fitness record during his decade at City denies him the top spot as the league’s best. Over 10 seasons, De Bruyne made 285 Premier League appearances for City, missing almost 100 games during that time, the equivalent of 2 and a half seasons.

To be the best you have to be available, and Salah’s fitness record has been incredibly consistent since his arrival at Liverpool in 2017. Liverpool have played 335 league matches in that time and Salah has only been unavailable for 25 of them, 19 of which were due to the Africa Cup of Nations with Egypt. In total, Salah has only missed six Liverpool games in nine years due to injury.

Ronaldo was equally robust during his first spell at United between 2003 and 2009, missing just eight games through injury during that six-year period. He was undoubtedly a phenomenon during the formative years of his United career. He won every major honor at least once and was arguably the most important player in Ferguson’s side during their three consecutive titles between 2007 and 2009, but Ronaldo scored fewer than 100 goals in that early spell and his real impact only lasted three seasons, meaning he doesn’t have the longevity of Salah.

That leaves Henry, Arsenal’s ‘Invincible’ who often tops lists of ‘greatest Premier League players of all time’ for good reason.

Henry was a devastating goalscorer – a player of breathtaking grace, pace and daring. He was as cool on the pitch as he was on the pitch, an advertising agency’s dream, and his carefully cultivated image made him the face of the Premier League in the early 2000s. And although Arsène Wenger’s great team was made up of stars such as Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp, ​​Robert Pires and Ashley Cole, Henry was the unstoppable force that opponents truly feared.

Henry’s 175 goals in 258 Premier League matches put him ahead of Salah in terms of goals per game – Salah has 191 in 323 matches – but Arsenal were already a great team when Henry arrived. Wenger had led the Gunners to a league and FA Cup double just 12 months earlier, so the France international simply slotted into a winning machine.

Salah was different. He arrived at Liverpool as the club approached 30 years since its last league title in 1990 and when it had won just one trophy – the 2012 League Cup – in 10 years. He helped lead Liverpool to success, while Henry signed for a club that had already been on that journey. And when Henry left the Gunners for Barcelona in 2007, he did so without having managed to win the Champions League – something Salah, De Bruyne, Ronaldo and Rooney all managed to do.

Salah was Liverpool’s inspiration during their run to Champions League glory in 2019 with 10 goals and five assists as Jürgen Klopp’s side became club European champions for the sixth time. He was also the key player during Liverpool’s two Premier League successes in 2019-20 and 2024-25, and now stands alongside Anfield greats Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard among the club’s greatest players of all time.

Like Henry, Salah has scored a 20-goal season in the Premier League five times – only Shearer, Kane and Sergio Agüero have done it more often. He is the only player to have won the PFA Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year awards three times.

So let’s recap: Salah has won every major club honor worth winning at least once, he has maintained peak form at Liverpool for just under a decade, his fitness is one step away from being impeccable and he has scored goals – in the biggest games too – since arriving at Anfield from AS Roma almost nine years ago. So when he leaves the Premier League stage at the end of this season, Salah will have no one ahead of him in the pantheon of league greats.

He was that GOOD.