The number is 13, and no one else in European football is within four matches of it. Salah’s goal and assist in Trabzonspor’s 4-2 win at KuPS on Thursday extended an Opta record that stretches back to the 2017-18 season, with the Egyptian the only player in Europe’s three major club competitions to have scored and assisted in the same match on 13 separate occasions. Neither Lionel Messi nor Cristiano Ronaldo has ever gone past nine.

That is a four-match gap. The move away from Liverpool has not slowed the European ledger.

Salah arrived at Trabzonspor in August as a free agent after nine seasons at Liverpool, where he scored 257 goals in 442 appearances. The questions that followed were about stage and setting more than form. Thursday night in Tampere answered them.

At Tammela Stadium, Salah slipped the pass that Paul Onuachu finished in the third minute. After Onuachu limped off injured, the Trabzonspor captain’s armband went to Salah, who scored himself in the 44th minute before being substituted for Noah Saviolo early in the second half.

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Creator as often as finisher

The 13-game tally is not a goalscoring list. It rewards something harder to repeat, being the player who finishes and the player who creates in the same 90 minutes. Since 2017-18, across the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League, no other player has done both as often in the same match.

Franculino Djú made it 3-0 just after the restart. KuPS replied through Petteri Pennanen in the 54th minute, and André Onana then saved a Piotr Parzyszek penalty that could have made the final minutes nervier. Djú scored again in stoppage time, Gustav Engvall replied, and Thomas Reis’s side had their three points.

Salah’s first Conference League goal

The 44th-minute strike was Salah’s first in the Conference League, and that is what completed the set. He has now scored and assisted in the same match in each of Europe’s three UEFA club competitions, the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League. No other player has done it in all three.

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