Mohamed Salah is not the favourite for this year’s Ballon d’Or. Here, Peter Bolster gives his personal opinion on why the Liverpool No. 11 will likely be snubbed for the award.There was a period stretching from 2017 right through to the present day when Mohamed Salah stood not only among the world’s best footballers, but perhaps as the most consistently elite of them all.In the 2024/25 season, at the age of 32, he once again proved indispensable, leading Liverpool to their historic 20th league title while registering the highest number of goal involvements in Europe.Nine years after arriving at Anfield as an explosive, goal-hungry wide forward, Salah has evolved into the tactical fulcrum of Liverpool’s attack, a player who still scores, still creates and still delivers when it matters most.Yet despite everything he has achieved, from trophies and individual awards to broken records and transformative social impact, Salah has never been regarded as a genuine frontrunner for the Ballon d’Or.He was placed sixth in 2018, fifth in 2019, and fifth in 2022. Respectable rankings, certainly, but conspicuously modest when measured against the weight of his achievements.He has never been close, never carried the narrative, never received the kind of romantic acclaim that seems to follow other greats.This disconnect, between output and recognition, between achievement and acclaim, raises a more uncomfortable question; why exactly has Salah been left out of football’s most exclusive club? Why is his brilliance not spoken about with the same reverence?While some may point to the importance of winning the Champions League in each year’s Ballon d’Or selection, there is perhaps a deeper-lying issue behind being consistently snubbed.With the 2025 Ballon d’Or ceremony imminent, the discussion has surfaced again, but once more, Salah is not at the top of the list of favourites. “Some things are out of my control”In a recent interview with Gary Neville, Salah addressed the Ballon d’Or discussion with calm but telling clarity. He admitted that the award once “drove [him] crazy,” but that he has since come to terms with the fact that some things are beyond his control.It was a subtle remark, understated and not bitter, but it said more than it might appear at first glance, because when you pause to ask what isn’t in Salah’s control, the list is strikingly short.He has delivered elite numbers for close to a decade, won the game’s biggest trophies, redefined positions and anchored one of the best sides of the modern era.He has been loyal, professional and consistent. What remains “out of his control” is not performance-based. It is something deeper, something more structural.It is his identity. Language to describe Mo Salah mattersEdward Said’s book, Orientalism, laid out how Western cultures have long represented the East through a prism of exoticism, as something admirable but fundamentally foreign, to be observed but not truly embraced. That same intellectual framework applies in subtler but equally powerful ways, to the way football’s establishment sees Salah.Salah is admired but rarely mythologised. He is watched, but not always understood. He is celebrated for his strength speed and goals, but seldom for his mind.And that in itself marks a departure from the way other great players are remembered. When Harry Kane drops deep to orchestrate play, he is praised as visionary. When Wayne Rooney adapted his game to a deeper creative role, it was framed as maturity and tactical intelligence. When Kaka, Modric or Figo dictated tempo from midfield, they were spoken of as artists.Salah has followed a similar evolution. From high-scoring inside forward to Liverpool’s creative conductor. He has adapted and refined his game year after year. His assist numbers have soared, his positional play has grown more nuanced and his leadership without the armband has become quietly foundational.In 2024–25, he finished as the Premier League’s Playmaker of the Season with a career-high 18 assists, proof that his creativity now stands alongside his goalscoring.And yet, the language around him remains frozen in time. He is still ‘explosive, direct, and ‘clinical’, as if the subtleties of his game are too inconvenient to acknowledge.This is the cost of being seen through an Orientalist lens. One-dimensional narratives are easier to tell than complex realities. The religious lens of recognitionPart of Salah’s challenge lies in visibility, not just as an Arab or an African, but as a practising, unapologetically devout Muslim.He prays after scoring. He fasts during Ramadan, even during matches. He speaks openly of Allah and has become, in ways both deliberate and natural, a public symbol of his faith.This makes him a rarity among elite footballers and certainly among Ballon d’Or winners. Only three Muslim men have ever won the award: George Weah in 1995, Zinedine Zidane in 1998, and Karim Benzema in 2022.None placed their faith as visibly at the centre of their careers as Salah. Weah was a Muslim at the time of his win but later returned to Christianity. Zidane is of Muslim heritage but describes himself as non-practising. Benzema is a Muslim who observes Ramadan and acknowledges his faith publicly, though usually in personal rather than symbolic terms.Salah is different. His faith is central, visible, unavoidable. And in a world where image, marketability and perception shape recognition, that visibility, noble though it is, may be part of the reason he is kept at arm’s length. The Mo Salah effect And yet, what a legacy he has already carved.A Stanford University study found that hate crimes in Merseyside dropped by nearly 19 percent, relative to comparable areas, following Salah’s arrival at Liverpool.The number of anti-Muslim tweets among Liverpool fans fell by half. Without grand gestures or declarations, Salah changed the emotional and cultural atmosphere of an entire footballing city.He made people look again, at Islam, at Arab-ness, at difference and see something familiar, something admirable, something brilliant. How many Ballon d’Or contenders can say that?The problem is not what Salah has failed to do. The problem is what some of the football world still refuses to see.And as this year’s Ballon d’Or approaches, the question lingers louder than ever, what more could he have done?