Mo Salah - Chasing the Dream

 Hamid Nouh, Salah's first coach: "He was ready to sacrifice everything, he wanted to work hard, and liked to learn." It sounds simple, until you start drilling at the heart of what it means for a boy from Nagrig to endure a  nine-hour round trip five days a week to train in Cairo.

Cairo: Shoe Bazaar
Robert Charles Goff (1837-1922)
Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

Salah's route [at age 14] has become so well known, you can read the tale of the minimum four buses he needed to take each way in Chinese, Spanish and every other major language. One from the T-junction at the edge of his village to reach Basyoun. The transfer from there to the capital of the Gharbia Governorate, Tanta. The great slog of around 100km to reach the rush of Ramses Square. A connection from Cairo's chaotic central transport hub to Nasr City. And, on the luckier days, a ride close to the club's gates to spare Salah having to run almost two kilometres up a steep hill to be on time for his training session. After four hours at the centre, he would leave to do that all again in reverse.

The problem with summarising the journey in this way, as it has been done since 2017 when Salah started shifting the parameters for greatness in the Premier League, is that it omits the reality of what this daily grind truly entailed.

When Nouh underlines sacrifice, part of it was Salah giving up his youth to sit shoulder slammed into shoulder, bodies filling up every available inch of the microbus and often even hanging off it, racing to the next stop and against the anxiety of missing a connection in a schedule that had no rhyme nor reason, with only enough cash for the exact journey. Salah weirdly enjoyed rather than endured the stressful odyssey.

"I didn't feel tired travelling when I was young," he said in 2022. It's because I was doing something I wanted, chasing a dream I had to reach. I wasn't seeing my situation, I was seeing my goal. These are days I sit and think about, I'll never forget them and I still smile now when I remember everything."...

He had already packed in a lifetime's worth of sacrifice, effort and lessons by his 18th birthday. The moment he will never forget, however, was when he joined the first team group and moved into the Al Mokawloon's residences.

"Not everyone could stay there, so psychologically I felt like I became someone, like a star," Salah said. "I used to see players finish training and go upstairs while I would leave to take the journey back to Nagrig. I'd think, 'One day I'll go up there."

He would go higher than any other Egyptian footballer.

(Melissa Reddy, The Guardian, 2026)

What an incredible story. Such a brilliant footballer who has shown to us all the real meaning of sacrifice, determination and working hard. His many charitable acts, including support for his home village of Nagrig, have become known through other people rather than through him.