Speaking on his Facebook page, Ben Foster has shared what Mohamed Salah asked him after Liverpool hammered Watford earlier this month.
The Reds ran riot at Vicarage Road in Claudio Ranieri’s first game in charge, and after the final whistle, Salah was quick to ask Foster a question.
The Egyptian had scored on the day, but the one thing he wanted to ask Foster about was how he would have reacted if the Reds had been awarded a penalty.
What’s been said?
Foster shared the details of his conversation with Salah.
“He came up to me at full-time and he’s got his hand over his mouth a little bit because he didn’t want the cameras to catch it,” Foster said.
“He’s come up and gone: ‘Ben, Ben…’ I’ve said: ‘Okay, yeah? You alright?’
“And he’s asked: ‘If I’d have got a penalty, which way would you have dived?’
“Now, as soon as he said that, I thought: ‘Oh, you clever, clever boy’ because we do our research. All the goalkeepers out there do their research on strikers and we’ll try and find out where their last four, five or 10 penalties might have gone, for example, and Mo Salah’s last five penalties he put to the goalkeeper’s right.”
That’s why he’s the best
Salah is arguably the best player in the world right now, and it’s things like this that make him so good.
It’s one thing to be physically and technically gifted, but this desire to always be learning and always be improving is what separates the good players from the great players.
In asking Foster this question, Salah has gained some valuable insight into how goalkeepers prepare to face his penalties, and he will be able to adjust accordingly based on how Foster answered.
Of course, Foster didn’t tell us how he responded to Salah’s question, but the fact that the winger is asking these sort of things just goes to show that he’s trying to get every marginal gain possible.
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