In Turkey, they call it “Salah-mania”. Wherever the former Liverpool star goes, he seems to leave a crowd in his wake. Often enough, he has just scored. Trabzon, meanwhile, has become an unlikely tourist destination. Once better known abroad for its medieval associations than its present-day attractions, the city is now drawing visitors from across Turkey and beyond, all hoping to see Salah in action. For some, it has become a place of pilgrimage.
It is not hard to see why. At 34, Salah is dominating Turkish football with disarming ease: ten goals in his first 12 appearances for his new club, eight in eight league games. Trabzonspor, who had won just one league title in the previous forty years, in 2022, are suddenly in contention for another. Salah has raised the club’s ambitions, on and off the pitch. Attendances are up. So is engagement on social media. Visitors are arriving in the city in numbers, many of them with Salah firmly in mind. According to the local press, the number of Egyptian tourists visiting Trabzon has risen by 55% since his arrival. The numbers are still in the thousands, but the attention is unprecedented, and new landmarks are emerging almost by accident. One is “Momo’s Rock”, named after the spot where Salah sat for a photograph after a hike. Now others are making the trip, too.
His influence has even reached the local kitchen. Videos of Salah trying kuymak and kaygana, two regional specialities, have sent people looking up recipes. “Gastronomy is not just about food; it is a calling card for the way people live,” local figures in Trabzon have said, describing an impact that extends well beyond football. “A player like him, with millions of fans around the world, does more than raise the sporting profile of a city when he arrives. He helps strengthen so many other things, too. We are now seeing a significant increase in demand for these flavours.”
The goals keep coming, and so do the visitors. Given his age and everything he has already achieved, there might have been questions about his motivation. There needn’t have been. The former Liverpool man is living like a pasha, scoring freely, enjoying himself and bringing a new kind of attention to Trabzon. He seems to have found exactly what he came for.