Mohamed Salah Statue

Submission 4,602

About

Mohamed Salah Statue refers to a series of jokes about a sculpture of professional soccer player Mohamed "Mo" Salah. In fall 2018, the statue became the focus of a series of jokes, memes and photoshops mocking and criticizing the statue's likeness of Salah, similar to 2017's Cristiano Ronaldo Bust.

Origin

On November 4th, 2018, a statue of professional soccer player Mohamed Salah was put on display at the World Youth Forum in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt. The sculputre was intended to look like Salah's goal celebration pose, with the player's arm's outstretched, his head held high and smile on his face (shown below, left).^[1]

That morning, Twitter ^[2] user @AmrM28463411 tweeted a photograph of the statue. The captioned the photograph, "@RamyCol this statue is for @MoSalah plz take action" (shown below, right).

Spread

That day, Twitter^[3] user @beINSPORTSUSA tweeted several photographs of the statue. The post received more than 770 retweets and 2,300 likes in two days.

Over the next 24 hours, people began posting photoshops of the statue and comparing it to other cultural properties (examples below, left and center). For example, Twitter^[4] user @utdsupreme compared the photograph to the American cartoon character Beavis and Butt-head. The post received more than 370 retweets and 1,600 likes in two days (shown below, right).

On November 4th, Twitter^[5] published a Moments page about the statue.

Several media outlets covered the reaction to the statue, including BBC,^[6] Al Jazeera,^[7] CNN,^[8] The Guardian^[9] and more. According to CNN, the artist behind the sculpture state she's "not happy with it."