From a defender to a goalscoring machine : Mohamed Salah's story

Goal reveals how the Egyptian's former youth team coach at Al-Mokawloon changed the 25-year-old's position - and as well as the entire course of his career. Mohamed Salah will be Liverpool's principal attacking threat in Saturday's Champions League final against Real Madrid.If he leads the Reds to the victory, the Egyptian sensation would be the early favourite to win this year's Balon d'Or. However, if he had not burst into tears as a 16-year-old, he might never have become one of the world's most feared forwards. Salah joined Al-Mokawloon (known in Europe as 'Arab Contractors') at the age 11 and "his talent spoke for itself," according to Hamdi Nooh, the head of the club’s academy. "Everyone in the village was expecting a great future for him as he showed real talent when he was very young," Salah's cousin, Hamed Ghaly, told Goal. "The village became famous because of him.He started from zero and his family helped him a lot. He always dreamed of playing in Europe, even before Al-Mokawloon.He followed the English Premier League but his favourite players were Zinedine Zidane and Luis Figo." There was a lot of tough competition to get into the junior teams at Al-Mokawloon and, at first, Salah played as a left-back or wing-back, often in the 3-5-2 formation with which the Egypt national team enjoyed success. However, even then, at that age and while playing as a defender, he had developed a thirst for goals, as former Al-Mokawloon Under-16s and Under-17s coach Said Al Shesheni learned after one particular game. "We had a very tough away match against strong opponents, ENPPI, and we had a fantastic result, winning 4-0," he recalled. "We were all celebrating except Mohamed, who was crying because he had not scored a goal in this historic victory.That made me realise the depth of his passion for scoring goals. He was struggling to cover the long distance between his position, left-back, and the opponents' goal. “