Former Liverpool star Dejan Lovren struck up a close friendship with Reds talisman Mohamed Salah during their time together at Anfield – but he had no regrets about departing the club.<\/p>\n
The Croatian center-back recovered from a mixed start to his spell on Merseyside to form part of a Champions League and Premier League-winning squad. Signed from Southampton during Brendan Rodgers’ tenure at Liverpool back in the summer of 2014, the defender enjoyed a host of memorable moments in a red shirt.<\/p>\n
Undeniably his most storied contribution for the club came as he scored the winner in a historic comeback victory over Borussia Dortmund during Liverpool’s run to the Europa League final in 2016. One of the greatest Anfield nights in living memory, the result arguably proved to be a catalyst for the Reds’ revival under Jurgen Klopp in the years that followed.<\/p>\n
During his later years on Merseyside, Lovren was used primarily as a rotation option under the charismatic German and he famously struck up a friendship with star forward Salah in that time. After six seasons with the club – which consisted of 185 appearances and five goals – the center-half departed for Russian side Zenit Saint Petersburg in 2020.<\/p>\n
After making that switch in the summer following Liverpool’s first league title triumph in 30 years, Lovren admitted that he felt the time was right to depart Anfield. Speaking to Russian publication Sport Express, he opined: “No, I don’t regret [leaving]. My decision in the summer was firm – to leave Liverpool, and I do not look back.<\/p>\n
“I got upset last season when I didn’t play, but now everything is different, he confessed, as he opened up on his final campaign at the club which saw him play only ten times in the league. “I think Liverpool miss me more than I miss them and Jurgen Klopp knows this, because we communicate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Liverpool star Dejan Lovren struck up a close friendship with Reds talisman Mohamed Salah during their time together at Anfield – but he had no regrets about departing the club. The Croatian center-back recovered from a mixed start to his spell on Merseyside to form part of a Champions League and Premier League-winning squad. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/I-was-Mo-Salah-s-best-friend-at-Liverpool-but-I-don-t-regret-leaving-Liverpool-com-04-18-2025_06_46_PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11197"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11200,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\/revisions\/11200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evutisblog.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}