Lovren Slams “Disgusting” Salah Criticism And Challenges Carragher: “Say It To His Face”

Mohamed Salah spent nine years making Liverpool one of the most feared attacking sides in world football. He scored 257 goals. He delivered a Premier League title, a Champions League, and an era that supporters will describe to their grandchildren.
Then came one difficult season — and, according to his former teammate Dejan Lovren, the knives came out.
Lovren has had enough. In a blunt, wide-ranging interview with WinWin, the Croatian defender delivered one of the most direct and personal defences of Salah seen from within the footballer’s inner circle — and he aimed his sharpest words directly at Jamie Carragher.

“It’s Not Harsh. It’s Disgusting.”
Lovren did not arrive at this interview searching for diplomatic language. He found none.
“The way they treated him this season is not harsh,” he said. “It’s disgusting. Why didn’t they talk about him like this for the past eight or nine years? Tell me. One season, and then he’s the target again. There are so many other issues.”

The argument is straightforward and difficult to dismiss. Salah’s 2025-26 season — his final one at Anfield — produced a dip in output after one of the most prolific campaigns in the club’s history the year before. For a section of the media, that dip became the story. His form, his future, his alleged selfishness — all were dissected in a tone that Lovren believes bore no relationship to the respect the player had earned over nearly a decade of consistent excellence.

One difficult season after eight extraordinary ones does not erase the record. But in the relentless cycle of football media, it became the lens through which Salah’s entire Liverpool legacy was temporarily reframed.
Lovren’s fury is the fury of someone who watched a friend’s reputation managed carelessly by people with platforms and no accountability.

The Carragher Challenge
Jamie Carragher is one of English football’s most prominent analysts — sharp, authoritative, and willing to deliver verdicts that less confident pundits avoid. He had previously accused Salah of selfishness. Lovren responded to those comments with the directness of someone who has nothing to lose and everything to say.

“Especially Carragher — he says whatever he wants,” Lovren said. “I always said he should tell him this to his face. Say all these things to Mo to his face. He’ll never say that. Because I know he never will, because he never said it to me. He’s talked badly about me too, but he never said that to me anyway. He’s just performing on TV and he gets paid for it, so he needs to perform this way.”

The critique lands with force precisely because it does not attack Carragher’s intelligence or his football knowledge. It attacks something more personal: the gap between what pundits say on television and what they would say to a player’s face in a room without cameras.

That gap exists. Every professional footballer knows it exists. Lovren is simply the one willing to say so publicly.
The implicit challenge — say it to his face — is not a threat. It is an exposure. Carragher has built a career on honest, sometimes brutal analysis. Lovren is asking whether that honesty has limits determined by proximity rather than conviction.

Slot vs Klopp: The Relationship That Ended the Era
Lovren’s defence of Salah extends beyond the media criticism. He places the blame for the departure squarely on the relationship between the Egyptian and manager Arne Slot — and the contrast with what existed under Jürgen Klopp.

“I don’t think it’s the management that pushed Salah to leave,” he said. “I think it’s just one person. I think it’s just the manager. They didn’t have a good relationship. Let’s put it simply.”

He elaborated on what made the Klopp dynamic different. “With Klopp, he had a really good relationship. It wasn’t always perfect, but they knew each other very well, and they trusted each other, they liked each other, and Mo gave everything on the pitch for Klopp, and Klopp gave him that trust. But with Slot it was the opposite. It’s that simple.”

The framing is significant. Lovren is not criticising Slot’s tactical ability or his record — Liverpool finished the season with the Premier League title in reach and a competitive squad. He is describing something more fundamental: the human relationship between a manager and his best player, and what happens when that relationship does not work.

Great players perform for managers they trust. Salah performed for Klopp for eight seasons with the kind of consistency that defied age, expectation, and logic. The drop in output under Slot — whether caused by form, age, tactical fit, or the relationship — produced a version of Salah that gave the media its opening.
Lovren’s argument is that the media took that opening and ran with it far beyond what was justified.

What Salah’s Exit Actually Means
Salah left Liverpool after nine years with 257 goals — the most in the club’s Premier League history. He kissed the Anfield turf on the final day and walked away from a standing ovation that lasted several minutes.

The farewell was emotional and unambiguous in its meaning: this was a player the club loved, who loved the club back, and whose departure marked the end of something that cannot simply be replaced.

For Nigerian fans — and across the African continent where Salah is perhaps football’s most beloved active player — the criticism directed at him during his final season carried an edge of injustice that Lovren is now voicing. A Nigerian or Egyptian fan watching the coverage could see clearly what Lovren is now articulating: that Salah’s record demanded far more grace during a difficult final year than some sections of the British football media were willing to extend.

The question of where Salah goes next remains open. His performances in his final Liverpool season, his age, and his continued involvement with the Egypt national team all factor into what comes next.

What Lovren has made clear is that when history settles its verdict on Mohamed Salah’s time at Liverpool, it will not be written by the pundits who discovered his flaws in the final chapter. It will be written by the 257 goals, the trophies, and the turf he kissed on his way out.