Núñez and Salah Reunited: A Role Reversal in Turkey

Darwin Núñez is heading back into Mohamed Salah’s orbit. Only now, the Uruguayan walks through the door as the highest earner in the room.

According to Saudi newspaper Al-Yaum, relaying reports from Turkish outlet Sözcü, Al-Hilal have agreed to send Núñez to Trabzonspor on a one-season loan for the coming campaign. The deal keeps the striker on his full Al-Hilal salary: a hefty 22 million euros.

That figure matters. It’s 5 million euros more than Salah’s current wage packet at Trabzonspor, with the Egyptian on 17 million. At Liverpool, Salah was the undisputed superstar and Núñez the chaotic, sometimes electrifying understudy. In Turkey, the pay scale tells a different story.

The numbers behind the move are striking. Trabzonspor will cover just 8 million euros of Núñez’s salary. Al-Hilal will shoulder the remaining 14 million, a clear sign of how eager the Saudi club are to move him off their books after a difficult first year.

Núñez never truly settled in Riyadh. He laboured through the first half of last season, struggled to convince, then disappeared from the domestic squad list in the second half of the campaign. For a marquee arrival, it was a brutal fall from prominence.

So he gets a reset. And he gets it alongside a familiar face.

This will be the second time Salah and Núñez share a dressing room, after their spell together at Liverpool between 2022 and 2025. In that period, Salah remained Liverpool’s reference point, the man who drove them to a second Premier League title and ended a five-year wait for the trophy. Núñez, raw but relentless, played around that orbit, feeding off the service and the chaos of Jürgen Klopp’s attack.

Now the pair link up in very different colours, and in a very different context. Salah has already made his own seismic move, joining Trabzonspor earlier this summer on a two-year deal that closed the book on a nine-year Liverpool story that began in 2017 and rewrote the club’s modern history.

At Anfield, Salah was the symbol of an era. In Trabzon, he becomes the spearhead of an ambitious project, a global icon dropped into the Black Sea city to tilt the balance of power in Turkey.

And now comes Núñez, the high-wage gamble.

Trabzonspor get a forward still in his prime, on superstar money without paying the full superstar bill. Al-Hilal get relief and a chance to quietly move on from a signing that never matched the fanfare. Salah gets a familiar runner ahead of him, someone whose movement he already understands.

For Núñez, though, this is sharper. This is a career crossroads dressed up as a lucrative loan. He arrives as the top earner, backed by a wage that demands end product, not just potential and promise.

Salah has already proved he can carry a club. The question now is whether Núñez can finally grow into something more than the supporting act at his side.