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For a pundit, Jamie Carragher seems to find himself at the center of the story surprisingly often. The former Liverpool defender is once again at the heart of things amid Mohamed Salah's dispute with the club, and it comes after he already clashed with Lionel Messi.
In fairness to Carragher, he was dragged into this latest situation without getting much of a say in it. In an extraordinary interview, Salah specifically name-checked the Sky Sports and CBS analyst.
"Tomorrow, Carragher is going to criticize me, but that's fine," said Salah, moments after claiming that the club had thrown him under the bus. The Egypt star also said that he no longer has any relationship with Arne Slot, following a short spell out of the first team.
Naturally, Carragher had no choice but to respond. And while Salah's prediction about criticism proved prescient, you might argue that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That being said, the tone of Carragher's subsequent tirade certainly left many a little taken aback. He branded Salah a "disgrace", which will have done nothing to fix the fractured relationship between the pair (although he did later apologize on CBS for upsetting the Liverpool forward).
But while the pundit had no time whatsoever for Salah's decision to air his grievances in public, he did take the opportunity to reiterate his respect for the 33-year-old on the pitch. Carragher placed Salah "very close" to some of the biggest stars of world football, including Messi.
"When I’ve thought about it over the weekend, and I’ve put myself in Salah’s position, or how I was as a player, I’m not Mo Salah," said Carragher on Sky Sports. "Mo Salah is a world-renonwned player, who is famous around the world, and should those players be treated differently?
"I think they should, I think they should be treated differently. And when you think of the players in that bracket over the last eight years, I would say Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe.
"I wouldn’t put Salah alongside them, but he’s very close for what he’s done for Liverpool. So a legendary figure, and all those players, I think, get a privilege, exactly the same one Mo Salah gets at Liverpool.
"He doesn’t have to defend, he doesn’t have to chase back. So that’s the privilege he has with Liverpool."
Carragher acknowledged that this is a privilege that only comes with immense talent. But he also accused Salah of taking it for granted, and mistaking it for a belief that Liverpool's success over the years has been solely down to him.
Salah, of course, is unlikely to agree with that asessment, with the relationship between the pair growing distinctly frosty over the course of a series of public back-and-forths. And the Liverpool star is not the first to turn against Carragher, with Messi once going as far as sending the pundit a private message.
Back in 2021, Carragher had questioned whether Messi was a great signing for PSG. Later, he revealed that Messi had responded on Instagram by calling him a "donkey":
"I had a little pop at Ronaldo earlier in the season, didn’t think it was a great signing for United, then I said the example of Messi, I didn’t think Messi's a great signing for PSG," Carragher explained. "It was on Monday Night Football and I got a private message on Instagram.
"I will not be showing private messages but he basically called me a donkey."
It is a strange state of affairs. Carragher openly rates both Messi and Salah among an ultra-select group of players who have defined a generation of footballing talent, and yet he has still managed to rub them both up the wrong way.
Ultimately, anybody paid to espouse their opinions about football will upset players from time to time. But with Salah joining Messi on the growing list of players with a distinct grudge against Carragher, the former Liverpool man must be starting to wonder how he finds himself in these situations quite so often.
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