Mo Salah personally contacts Egyptian sculptor of widely criticized statue

After a bronze statue of Mohamed Salah unveiled in Egypt earlier this week was criticized for its poor resemblance to the Liverpool striker, Mai Abdullah, the Egyptian girl who made the statue, revealed that Salah got in touch with her and told her to ignore the criticism.

Abdullah, who voiced her happiness that Salah called her, said the football star encouraged her to resume her work as an artist and to ignore critics, adding that he commended her as he told her that he checked her social media page and liked her work.

She also said that he told her she was an “excellent artist and she will become famous one day”, adding that he asked her to do a statue for him to put at his home and told her to take her time to make it.

The statue, which depicted Salah with a disproportionately large head and small arms, was unveiled earlier this week at a youth forum in Sharm El Sheikh.

statue

Abdullah, 24, had responded to the criticism via her Facebook page and said the statue was not made to be unveiled at the Youth Forum and sculpting it hadn’t been done yet but she was surprised when they asked her to display it at the forum and she did not have the time to finish it.

Abdullah, who had made statues of Egyptian celebrities such as of Mary Mounib and Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, said the statue was in the phase of white gypsum but officials at the forum said they wanted it to be in bronze so she agreed to pour the bronze over the gypsum. She said that this is why it came out that way, noting that the statue was not finished yet and she had to hand it over as they insisted to display it at the forum.

She also said that she was not satisfied with the statue and was sad for displaying it when it looked like that, adding that she has not been put down by the negative comments but pledged to present the statue in its best shape during her next exhibition at the end of this month.