As Liverpool trounced LASK on Thursday, Mohamed Salah tied Thierry Henry’s record for the most goals ever scored in Europe for an English team.
The forward came on for Ryan Gravenberch with 16 minutes left in the Europa League match after starting the game on the bench. Before he entered the game, the Reds had already turned around a first-half deficit, but Salah was able to polish the score.
Darwin Nunez caught Rene Renner with the ball two minutes from the end and squared it to Salah on the right side of the area. The Egyptian was able to slip his shot past LASK goalkeeper Tobias Lawal despite having to shoot from a small angle.
The goal gave the guests all three points, moving them to the top of Group E. And Salah had an added reason to rejoice when he tied Henry, a legendary Arsenal player, for the record-breaking goal.
His 42nd goal in a major European competition—for these purposes, the Champions League or Europa League—was scored by the Liverpool great. No player has ever scored more goals for an English club in Europe.
With all bar eight of his European goals for the Gunners coming in the Champions League, Henry is the only player who is even with him. However, with at least five more Europa League games left in this season, Salah seems virtually certain to break the record entirely.At the Raiffeisen Arena, Salah wasn’t the only one with a unique reason to rejoice. As the first Liverpool manager to accomplish that distinction, Jurgen Klopp’s team’s comeback victory was the Reds’ 50th in a European match.
Klopp quipped that many would “hate” the fact that he is now Liverpool’s most successful manager in Europe as he expressed his joy at reaching that milestone. But he believed that his team deserved the three points despite falling behind early.
Let me put it this way: Everyone will despise the fact that I’m still the most successful Liverpool manager [in this regard] if I have 50 after the group stage! It’s lovely. In Europe, we played quite a few games, according to Klopp.
We usually reached the finals, so it’s excellent that we were able to win that many games. It’s fantastic, but most likely because there are a lot more games in the European competition than in the past. I’m very certain that’s it.
“Obviously, LASK had one shot on target in the opening stanza, and it came from a set-piece. We had some really great moments, but when I noticed the guys didn’t share that feeling, I realized we weren’t able to build confidence from them. I then wondered if we should try that again.
