Is Mohamed Salah the single most influential player in Champions League history?

He might not be Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo yet but he is proving even more transformational for Liverpool

It was a moment of mirth, to follow so many moments of brilliance, but also one of clarity. Jurgen Klopp was asked the expected question, after a performance by Mohamed Salah that even defied the expectations around him.

“If you think he is the best in world, write it or say it,” the German smiled. “He is in outstandingly good shape, world-class shape… but to be best in the world you need to do it over a longer period, I think. The other two are not bad.”

The other two are of course Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi, and there’s obviously a lot of logic to what Klopp is saying. Salah hasn’t yet won one of the multiple Champions League titles that they have, so it still feels a bit fanciful to quite put him at the same level, but that fantastic form does raise a maybe more interesting debate.

Messi and Ronaldo have reached such a level that they have been central to the two clubs that have dominated the last decade of European football, winning six of the last nine Champions Leagues. That has also been because the modern economics of the game have given those two players a concentration of quality around that is unprecedented in the sport’s history, making both those two stars and their star-studded squads all the better. Those two clubs have also represented the extreme of a gradual process in the game, and how such exceptional wealth - the source of the rise of the super-clubs - is almost the basic entry-level requirement to the Champions League latter stages.

Few clubs have defied that wealth in the last decade or so, but those who have had all required something extra special.

This is where Salah comes in, and where that extra debate is.

Of the clubs outside the super elite to make a Champions League final - an achievement Liverpool now stand on the brink of, thanks primarily to Salah - is the Egyptian the most influential player any of them have had?

And, if that is true, will he thereby have been the player to have the deepest individual effect on a Champions League side, since it will lift them so far above their expectations?

One obvious answer to this question is Salah’s predecessor as Liverpool’s talisman, Steven Gerrard.

It was his goal and his influence that turned and won the actual final in 2005, so that is something the Egyptian will have to emulate. That really is Ronaldo and Messi stuff.

Salah was once again on another plane against Roma (Getty)

It’s just it’s also Ronaldo and Messi stuff to be the individuals that settle the earlier knock-out games as well, and often before they even get started as contests. That is something that Gerrard hasn’t quite done to the level that Salah has. It still felt like Gerrard was a key part of a machine, rather than something really out there on his own like Salah. It was the Egyptian’s running that set the pace and set all events in motion against Manchester City, and his brilliant goals that were the true difference against Roma.

Bayer Leverkusen 2002 didn’t quite have a player like that, as brilliant as Michael Ballack was, and there was also the fact that was still when the Champions League - and European football as a whole - was in a less economically stratified period. The gaps were beginning to appear at that point, sure, but they weren’t quite chasmic.

Gerrard turned the 2005 final in Liverpool's favour (Getty)

Porto’s win in 2004 was meanwhile more about the cosmically good management of Jose Mourinho than any player, as he seemed to have offer a tactical insight and level of psychological management that really did seem other-worldly at the time. Porto had a Deco, but was really relevant about a Deco was how a player like that was then so completely willing to subsume himself to the manager’s tactical demands.

Beyond that Liverpool of Gerrard and Rafa Benitez, it would be a long time since clubs outside that kind of wealth or status would break such ground, as the two Milan clubs offered last hurrahs for a broken era of Italian football. Those squads of Carlo Ancelotti and Internazionale did still have a depth beyond most in Europe, even if would soon be beyond every other Italian club bar Juventus. The Turin club have now made themselves “insiders”, as did Diego Simeone with Atletico Madrid.

Salah has taken his and Liverpool's game to another level in this season's competitions (REUTERS) (Reuters)

The next side to really defy so much around them was really another Jurgen Klopp team in 2012-13, but not even Borussia Dortmund could defy the power of Bayern Munich. While Robert Lewandowski was also so brilliant in hitting four against Real Madrid in that season’s semi-final, Dortmund were still more about multiple points of attack. Liverpool are supposed to be about that, too, but it’s just the individual influence of one player has become so pronounced.

If Salah can continue this right into a final, and emulate Gerrard in that regard, there might be no debate on this one.

He’s already done so, so much. As Klopp said, he's in outstandingly good shape, and has maybe been the individual bar Ronaldo to most shape this season's Champions League.