Mohamed Salah has raised doubts about his Liverpool future, saying he is yet to be offered an extension to his contract, which expires at the end of the season.
Salah spoke out after scoring two goals in Liverpool’s 3-2 win over Southampton on Sunday and suggested he is more likely to leave than stay with the Premier League leader.
“Well, we are almost in December and I haven’t received any offers yet to stay in the club," he told reporters. "I’m probably more out than in. You know I have been in the club for many years. There is no club like this. But in the end it is not in my hands."
Salah's goals saw Liverpool extend its lead at the top of the standings to eight points. The Egypt international is 32 and has been at the club since 2017.
He has scored 12 goals in 18 appearances this season.
Salah gave a rare interview to English print media before boarding the team bus after the Southampton game and expressed his frustration about the lack of progress with his contract.
“I’m not going to retire soon so I’m just playing, focusing on the season and I’m trying to win the Premier League and hopefully the Champions League as well. I’m disappointed but we will see," he said.
“I’m very professional. Everybody can see my work ethic. I’m just trying to enjoy my football and I will play at the top level as long as possible. I’m just doing my best because this is who I am and I try to give it all for myself and for the club. We will see what happens next.”
Salah has been heavily linked with a move to Saudi Arabia since the oil-rich nation launched a drive to lure some of the biggest players in the world to its top league.
Salah is Liverpool's all-time leading scorer in the Premier League with 167 goals. In all competitions he has scored 223 goals in 367 appearances.
He has won a full set of trophies with the Merseyside club including the league title and the Champions League.
James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson
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Liverpool's Mohamed Salah celebrates after scoring during the English Premier League soccer match between Southampton and Liverpool in Southampton, England, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Sean Ryan)
Liverpool's Mohamed Salah leaves the pitch after the English Premier League soccer match between Southampton and Liverpool in Southampton, England, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Sean Ryan)
Russia's military captured a British national fighting with Ukrainian troops who have occupied part of Russia's Kursk region, according to reports Monday, as Moscow began daylight drone attacks on civilian areas of Ukraine and its ground forces accelerated gains along parts of the front line.
The Briton was identified by state news agency Tass and other media as James Scott Rhys Anderson. Tass quoted him as saying that he had served as a signalman in the British army for four years and then joined the International Legion of Ukraine, formed early on in Russia's nearly 3-year-old war against its neighbor.
On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces are straining to hold at bay a push by Russia's bigger army at places in the eastern Donetsk region. Russian forces recently have gained ground at “a significantly quicker rate” than they did in the whole of last year, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.
The Russians have detected and are exploiting weaknesses in the Ukrainian defenses, it said in an analysis late Sunday.
The war surpassed 1,000 days last week, and the milestone coincided with a significant escalation in hostilities.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force said Russia is adapting its drone tactics, as it fired 145 Shahed drones at Ukraine.
Russia has started launching drones during the day, whereas in the past most drone attacks occurred during the night, the air force said.
Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the National Security Council’s Counter-disinformation Center, said earlier this month that the Russians were looking to conserve their stocks of more destructive but more expensive missiles and also terrorize civilians.
The air force said it stopped almost all the drones before they struck.
But a morning missile attack on downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the northeast, injured at least 23 people, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov. He said the attack on a densely populated residential area was carried out by a modified surface-to-air S-400 missile.
The captured Briton reportedly served as an instructor for Ukrainian troops and was deployed to the Kursk region against his will. Tass published a video of the man saying in English that he doesn’t want to be “here.”
The report couldn’t be independently verified, but if confirmed it could be one of the first publicly known case of a Western national captured on Russian soil while fighting for Ukraine.
The U.K. Embassy in Moscow said officials were "supporting the family of a British man following reports of his detention” but provided no further details.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The soldier’s father, Scott Anderson, told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper that his son’s Ukrainian commander had informed him that the young man had been captured.
Scott Anderson said his son had served in the British military for four years, then briefly worked as a police custody officer before going to Ukraine to fight. He said he tried to convince his son not to join the Ukrainian military, and now he fears for his safety.
“I’m hoping he’ll be used as a bargaining chip, but my son told me they torture their prisoners and I’m so frightened he’ll be tortured," he told the newspaper.
The International Legion for Defense of Ukraine was created at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The Legion is a unit of Ukraine’s Ground Forces that consists mostly of foreign volunteers. Apart from the Legion, Ukraine recruits foreigners to other units of its army, filling squads, companies, or even battalions.
Early on in the war, Ukraine’s authorities said over 20,000 people from 52 countries came to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russia's aggression. Ever since, the numbers of foreign fighters in the ranks of the Ukrainian military have been classified.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
In this photo taken from a video released by Russian Defense Ministry press service on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024, Russian servicemen operate a Russian Uragan self-propelled multiple rocket launcher in an undisclosed location. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
