Mohamed Salah's Liverpool departure feels like a done deal. The 33-year-old is set to end his nine-year Anfield romance this summer, with the club confirming his exit in their retained list. But football has a funny way of throwing curveballs when you least expect them.

The Egyptian's situation looked dramatically different just twelve months ago. Fresh off firing 29 goals to help Arne Slot deliver the Premier League title in his debut season, Salah seemed untouchable. His contract ran until 2027 and everything pointed to a fairy tale ending. Then March arrived, and with it the bombshell announcement that his deal would be cut short.

Yet until Salah makes his final call after the World Cup, three compelling reasons could still prompt the most dramatic of U-turns.

First, there's the managerial factor. Salah's relationship with Slot clearly soured, reaching breaking point when he was dropped from the starting eleven in December. His post-match comments were brutal: "It seems like the club has thrown me under the bus." He also revealed his relationship with the Dutch manager had fundamentally changed, though they later patched things up.

Now Andoni Iraola has arrived, offering Salah a clean slate and a fresh project to sink his teeth into. The Spanish manager comes with Jurgen Klopp's seal of approval, no less. The German was effusive in his praise: "They turned it around, wow. That's real coaching, I have to say. He found a way to set this team up and they have a really good mix."

Klopp continued: "They play football in a fine direction, in the right moments. They use Dom Solanke in a sensational way, the support he gets from the centre, from the wings, the way they defend, they're really good, really compact, so that's proper."

That brings us to the second reason. Salah made his tactical preferences crystal clear in a social media post back in May: "I want to see Liverpool go back to being the heavy metal attacking team that opponents fear and back to being a team that wins trophies. That is the football I know how to play and that is the identity that needs to be recovered and kept for good. It cannot be negotiable and everyone that joins this club should adapt to it."

Iraola's philosophy might be music to Salah's ears. Where Slot was criticised for cautious approaches, the new Liverpool boss champions individual flair and attacking intent. "I sometimes value much more a player carrying the ball and forcing things to happen," Iraola told The Independent in January. "I think when you play too positional – one, two touches to find a free man – you sometimes lose the initiative from the players to just take their man on and attack the spaces."

That sounds exactly like the football Salah wants to play.

The third factor is pure legacy. Salah has already conquered everything at Liverpool: two Premier League titles, the Champions League, and a cabinet full of other major trophies. But there's still work to be done. He could help usher in Iraola's new era whilst chasing down Roger Hunt to move into second place on the club's all-time scoring charts.

More importantly, the adoration Liverpool supporters have for Salah simply cannot be replicated elsewhere. He's the Egyptian king at Anfield. Anywhere else, he's just another ageing superstar.

Salah himself admits the door isn't completely shut. When pressed about his future last month, he said: "I will still see [about where to go next], I have time now, I am going to the World Cup and then everything will be clear, either if there is a good opportunity before it I will decide, and if it is not there, I will make my decision after the World Cup."

A Salah U-turn feels unlikely given how definitively his departure has been announced. But as Liverpool's last two seasons have proven, football specialises in the unexpected. Sometimes the most compelling stories are the ones nobody sees coming.