Mohamed Salah Statue

2018viral photoclassic

Published September 7, 2026

The Mohamed Salah Statue is a bronze sculpture of the Liverpool and Egypt footballer unveiled at Egypt's World Youth Forum in November 2018. Its bulging head, thin legs, and unrecognizable face turned it into an instant Twitter roast, with users comparing it to Marv from Home Alone, Leo Sayer, and Art Garfunkel. The pile-on made it one of the defining bad-athlete-statue jokes of the year, sitting next to the earlier Cristiano Ronaldo bust as a go-to reference for football sculpture disasters.

football memesso bad its good memesdoppelganger memessarcasm memes2018 memes

Overview

The joke works because the sculpture, made by Egyptian artist Mai Abdallah, tries to capture Salah's trademark arms-open goal celebration but ends up with an oversized head, spindly legs, and a face that reads almost nothing like the striker1. Twitter users treated the photo like a lookalike puzzle, posting side by side comparisons with faces the statue happened to evoke better than Salah's own, from 1970s soft rock singer Leo Sayer to Marv the wet bandit from Home Alone2. Al Jazeera flagged the head as "abnormally large" and the legs as "unusually short and skinny," which is roughly the vocabulary the whole internet settled on within a day3.

The tone was more affectionate roasting than outrage. Salah is genuinely beloved in Egypt, and Abdallah described her design as "distinguished and executable," so the mockery was pointed at the object, not the athlete or the intent behind it2. A second wave was pure photoshop work, with the statue's head grafted onto cartoon characters, dropped into paintings, and lined up next to anything small headed or big haired for the visual gag4. Every article and thread compared it to Emanuel Santos's 2017 bust of Cristiano Ronaldo at Madeira airport, putting the Mohamed Salah Statue firmly in an ongoing genre of football sculpture disasters2.

Origin & Background

Platform
World Youth Forum unveiling (source event) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Mai Abdallah
Date
2018

The statue was unveiled on Sunday, November 4, 2018, at the World Youth Forum in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, an event attended by Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi1. Sculptor Mai Abdallah told Egypt Independent she was inspired by Salah's gesture of "opening his arms to the fans" after scoring, saying the design was "distinguished and executable"2. The finished bronze was meant to show him mid celebration. Instead, viewers online had trouble identifying the subject without the caption3.

The first widely shared image came that same morning from Twitter user @AmrM28463411, who posted a photo of the statue with the caption "@RamyCol this statue is for @MoSalah plz take action," tagging the football federation and the player4. That post gave the image its first push outside Egyptian coverage and set the mocking tone the rest of the day would follow.

How It Spread

Later on November 4, the @beINSPORTSUSA account posted several angles of the statue, and the thread pulled in more than 770 retweets and 2,300 likes within two days4. Photoshops started within about 24 hours. Twitter user @utdsupreme lined the statue up next to Beavis and Butt Head from the MTV cartoon, and that single post drew over 370 retweets and 1,600 likes4. Twitter compiled a Moments page about the reaction on the same day4.

Major outlets picked it up almost immediately. BBC's writeup went live noting the resemblance to Marv from Home Alone and Leo Sayer, and framing the situation as another entry in a list of football sculptures that leave fans confused1. Al Jazeera's story zeroed in on the "curiously ill proportioned body parts" and gathered every celebrity comparison circulating that day, adding Todd Flanders from The Simpsons and Art Garfunkel to the list3. The Guardian ran the story on November 5 under a headline noting that Salah was getting "the Ronaldo treatment," making the parallel to the Madeira airport bust the frame of the whole write up2.

Abdallah responded on Facebook, explaining that the brass casting came out looking different from the original mould and asking critics to "learn the art of criticism politely"1. She told reporters she had learned to take criticism, and CNN reported she was "not happy with it" either2. Salah himself never publicly commented on the statue, with Al Jazeera noting he was likely focused on Liverpool's Champions League fixture against Red Star Belgrade the following Tuesday3.

How to Use This Meme

There is no reusable template in the image macro sense. The common convention was to post the statue photo next to a lookalike, real or fictional, with a short caption or no caption at all, and let the visual match do the work2. Photoshoppers often swapped the statue into paintings, unrelated news images, or cartoon scenes, but the core joke lived in the side by side comparison to a face the sculpture actually resembled more than Salah's3.

Frequently Asked Questions

Mohamed Salah Statue

2018viral photoclassic

Published September 7, 2026

The Mohamed Salah Statue is a bronze sculpture of the Liverpool and Egypt footballer unveiled at Egypt's World Youth Forum in November 2018. Its bulging head, thin legs, and unrecognizable face turned it into an instant Twitter roast, with users comparing it to Marv from Home Alone, Leo Sayer, and Art Garfunkel. The pile-on made it one of the defining bad-athlete-statue jokes of the year, sitting next to the earlier Cristiano Ronaldo bust as a go-to reference for football sculpture disasters.

football memes so bad its good memes doppelganger memes sarcasm memes 2018 memes

Overview

The joke works because the sculpture, made by Egyptian artist Mai Abdallah, tries to capture Salah's trademark arms-open goal celebration but ends up with an oversized head, spindly legs, and a face that reads almost nothing like the striker1. Twitter users treated the photo like a lookalike puzzle, posting side by side comparisons with faces the statue happened to evoke better than Salah's own, from 1970s soft rock singer Leo Sayer to Marv the wet bandit from Home Alone2. Al Jazeera flagged the head as "abnormally large" and the legs as "unusually short and skinny," which is roughly the vocabulary the whole internet settled on within a day3.

The tone was more affectionate roasting than outrage. Salah is genuinely beloved in Egypt, and Abdallah described her design as "distinguished and executable," so the mockery was pointed at the object, not the athlete or the intent behind it2. A second wave was pure photoshop work, with the statue's head grafted onto cartoon characters, dropped into paintings, and lined up next to anything small headed or big haired for the visual gag4. Every article and thread compared it to Emanuel Santos's 2017 bust of Cristiano Ronaldo at Madeira airport, putting the Mohamed Salah Statue firmly in an ongoing genre of football sculpture disasters2.

Origin & Background

Platform
World Youth Forum unveiling (source event) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Mai Abdallah
Date
2018

The statue was unveiled on Sunday, November 4, 2018, at the World Youth Forum in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, an event attended by Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi1. Sculptor Mai Abdallah told Egypt Independent she was inspired by Salah's gesture of "opening his arms to the fans" after scoring, saying the design was "distinguished and executable"2. The finished bronze was meant to show him mid celebration. Instead, viewers online had trouble identifying the subject without the caption3.

The first widely shared image came that same morning from Twitter user @AmrM28463411, who posted a photo of the statue with the caption "@RamyCol this statue is for @MoSalah plz take action," tagging the football federation and the player4. That post gave the image its first push outside Egyptian coverage and set the mocking tone the rest of the day would follow.

How It Spread

Later on November 4, the @beINSPORTSUSA account posted several angles of the statue, and the thread pulled in more than 770 retweets and 2,300 likes within two days4. Photoshops started within about 24 hours. Twitter user @utdsupreme lined the statue up next to Beavis and Butt Head from the MTV cartoon, and that single post drew over 370 retweets and 1,600 likes4. Twitter compiled a Moments page about the reaction on the same day4.

Major outlets picked it up almost immediately. BBC's writeup went live noting the resemblance to Marv from Home Alone and Leo Sayer, and framing the situation as another entry in a list of football sculptures that leave fans confused1. Al Jazeera's story zeroed in on the "curiously ill proportioned body parts" and gathered every celebrity comparison circulating that day, adding Todd Flanders from The Simpsons and Art Garfunkel to the list3. The Guardian ran the story on November 5 under a headline noting that Salah was getting "the Ronaldo treatment," making the parallel to the Madeira airport bust the frame of the whole write up2.

Abdallah responded on Facebook, explaining that the brass casting came out looking different from the original mould and asking critics to "learn the art of criticism politely"1. She told reporters she had learned to take criticism, and CNN reported she was "not happy with it" either2. Salah himself never publicly commented on the statue, with Al Jazeera noting he was likely focused on Liverpool's Champions League fixture against Red Star Belgrade the following Tuesday3.

How to Use This Meme

There is no reusable template in the image macro sense. The common convention was to post the statue photo next to a lookalike, real or fictional, with a short caption or no caption at all, and let the visual match do the work2. Photoshoppers often swapped the statue into paintings, unrelated news images, or cartoon scenes, but the core joke lived in the side by side comparison to a face the sculpture actually resembled more than Salah's3.

Frequently Asked Questions