How Salah Learned English
How Salah learned English became a matter of public record in November 2024 when he appeared at the 43rd Sharjah International Book Fair and said something that surprised much of the football world. “Ninety percent of my success is rooted in what I’ve learned from books,” he told a packed audience, documented by Gulf News. “Reading has helped me become a better version of myself.”
For a player whose achievements are typically attributed to pace, finishing and extraordinary physical dedication, attributing 90 per cent of his success to reading was an unusual and genuinely revealing claim. How Salah learned English is inseparable from that claim, because his reading habit operates across Arabic and English simultaneously and has produced English acquisition as one of its most significant long-term by-products.
What Changed After Chelsea
The specific period during which how Salah learned English intensified most sharply was the professionally difficult stretch following his unsuccessful time at Chelsea. His loan spells at Fiorentina and Roma could have produced discouragement and retreat. Instead they produced something constructive and lasting. “I started reading extensively after I left Chelsea,” he told the Sharjah audience, documented by Emirates247. “It made me question how people succeed and what it takes to achieve greatness.”
The reading that followed was in English as well as Arabic, focused primarily on psychology and personal development. How Salah learned English through books gave him access to vocabulary, conceptual frameworks and descriptive language that the training ground environment cannot supply. A book about resilience or motivation in English introduces words for discussing inner states and professional choices that football conversation, however rich, simply does not generate. The combination of football immersion and intellectual reading produced the distinctive English fluency that his Liverpool press conferences demonstrate consistently across a decade.
What Reading Actually Does To Language
How Salah learned English through extensive reading is precisely what language research recommends. A word encountered in a sentence does two things simultaneously that a vocabulary list cannot: it shows the word doing something in context and surrounds it with an emotional or narrative situation that makes it memorable. Krashen’s research on extensive reading identifies this as one of the most powerful vocabulary acquisition mechanisms available: reading at a level slightly above current ability in English produces vocabulary growth that formal instruction alone cannot match for long-term retention and spontaneous use.
“I always have a book in my bag and try to read before I sleep,” he told Sharjah24. That daily reading habit is a language learning programme as much as a personal development one, and the two reinforce each other in ways that make both more effective than either alone. The British Council and Premier League’s Premier Skills English programme builds exactly this combination of reading and communicative use into every session of Premier Skills Sundays at ILC Hua Hin.
What Liverpool Supporters Noticed
How Salah learned English was visible throughout his Liverpool career in a quality that supporters noticed without necessarily being able to name it. His press conferences stood out because they contained actual ideas expressed with genuine precision. His discussions of motivation, of what drives him, of how he processes success and failure drew on a conceptual vocabulary that reading in English had built alongside the professional immersion of a decade at one of the world’s most demanding football clubs.
How Salah learned English produced a public presence that is genuinely interesting rather than carefully managed, and the difference is the books. Full details of the reading programme at Premier Skills Sundays are on the Premier Skills Sundays page. Take the free English level test and book a consultation. For school groups, the Premier Skills Camp and ILC residential English tours are available. Contact ILC directly.
