Liverpool star Mohamed Salah has admitted that Micah Richards was his “driver” during their time together at Fiorentina. Former defender Richards has revealed he was forced to pick his old team-mate up for six months.
Salah and Richards shared a dressing room for half a season at Fiorentina. Richards had joined the Serie A side at the beginning of the 2014/15 season on loan from Manchester City.
Chelsea loaned out Salah to the same club the following January. Richards made just 19 appearances in an injury-hit campaign in Italy.
But Salah ensured he was kept busy off the pitch. He has revealed how he became a close friend to the now Sky Sports pundit.
And he said that Richards would pick him up and drop him home on every visit to the Fiorentina training ground. Asked about Richards, Salah told a Sky Sports fan Q&A: “Oh my god, one of the craziest guys I’ve ever met. He’s really such a nice guy.
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“My family were in London and he was alone and we would always go for coffee. I didn’t have a car, he picked me up always before training and after training to drop me home. He was my driver at the time!
“And we had such a nice time. He pretended his Italian was better but everybody knows it was not! But he’s such a great guy and we were very close and we just stayed in touch.”
The interview with Salah was shown before Liverpool’s trip to City on Saturday. Sky cut back to Richards afterwards, who revealed he drove Salah for the entirety of his spell at Fiorentina.
Richards said: “We were in Florence, a beautiful city. He was like ‘Can you pick me up in the morning?’ and I said ‘Yeah no problem at all’ thinking his car was going to arrive two weeks later. I picked him up every day for six months!”
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Salah stayed in Italy, enjoying a successful spell at Roma, before joining Liverpool in 2017. Richards has hailed the character and self-belief of the Egyptian.
He added: “But honestly, I know people talk about him as a player, wonderful player, exceptional, world class. But as a guy he is amazing.
“He’s so humble, he’s so driven, he’s so passionate. He even said to me when we were at Fiorentina ‘One day I’m going to be one of the best forwards in the world’.
“And he’s stayed true to his word. That’s the belief that he has in his own ability. I couldn’t believe we at Fiorentina had him, I couldn’t believe Chelsea let him go.”
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