Chelsea winger Mohamed Salah has revealed that he was willing to join Liverpool before Jose Mourinho called him personally and convinced him to join the Blues.
Salah claimed that Liverpool were interested in him for a long time and he was waiting for the Merseyside outfit to agree on a fee with Basel.
“Liverpool wanted me for a number of months, they opened talks in October 2013,” Salah told.
“The negotiations were long, Basel rejected more than one offer because they thought they were below my real value.”
“I was waiting to go to Liverpool, I wanted to go because it was a club I really liked. Then I received a phone call directly from Jose Mourinho and everything changed.”
“He explained the situation, and said that I was a good player and Chelsea needed me. That was one of the main reasons why I didn’t go to Liverpool and chose Chelsea instead.”
Salah has spent two seasons on loan in Italy with Roma and Fiorentina. There were rumours that the Egyptian winger would join an Italian club permanently this summer but Conte’s arrival could change things for the goalscoring wide man.
With Cuadrado set to be given another chance at Chelsea, the former Juventus manager might bring Salah back as well. Chelsea do lack depth in the wide positions and Salah has shown that he can be a very useful player for Champions League level teams.
Meanwhile, Express are reporting that Chelsea could sell their star striker Diego Costa for an offer of around 71 million pounds.
Although they have quoted Times as their source while mentioning about the Chinese interest in Costa, Express do not mention where the 71 million pounds figure came from.
It could just be a rumour and time will tell if the Chinese are indeed willing to pay that much for the Spaniard.
Costa has been linked with a move away from Stamford Bridge this summer and Atletico Madrid are interested in resigning him.
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