LIVERPOOL, England (AP) — Mohamed Salah was left out of Liverpool's starting lineup by manager Arne Slot on Wednesday for the second straight Premier League match, in what could be a sign of the Egypt winger's fading status in his ninth season at the club.
Salah was named on the bench for the home game against Sunderland, only entering as a halftime substitute — and failing to score — in a 1-1 draw at Anfield.
On Sunday, the Egypt winger was an unused substitute in Liverpool's 2-0 win at West Ham. That marked the first time Salah hadn't started a league game under Slot, who took charge in the offseason of 2024 and won the title in his first season — chiefly thanks to Salah's league-high 29 goals.
Slot acknowledged Salah was unhappy at being dropped last weekend but that he “handled himself really well” and was a "top professional.”
That wasn't enough to regain his place in the team three days later, with Slot sticking with Dominic Szoboszlai on the right wing — seemingly because of his work off the ball.
“In the first half, we played Szoboszlai on the right to be defensively strong enough not to concede as much as we did in the last few weeks,” Slot said.
Liverpool has three matches — two in the Premier League and one in the Champions League — before Salah heads to the Africa Cup of Nations with Egypt.
Slot refused to say whether Salah would come into the team for Liverpool's next match — at Leeds on Saturday.
“I have not given a thought to how we will play at the weekend against Leeds,” he said. "I have an idea who will start but I won’t say.”
Salah has scored four goals in the Premier League this season.
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Liverpool's Mohamed Salah, centre, and Dominik Szoboszlai warm up before the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Liverpool and PSV in Liverpool, England, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)
Liverpool's Mohamed Salah applauds after the Champions League opening phase soccer match between Liverpool and PSV in Liverpool, England, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jon Super)
BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge has allowed a Tufts University student from Turkey to resume research and teaching while she deals with the consequences of having her visa revoked by the Trump administration, leading to six weeks of detention.
The arrest of Rümeysa Öztürk, a PhD student studying children's relationship to social media, was among the first as the Trump administration began targeting foreign-born students and activists involved in pro-Palestinian advocacy. She had co-authored an op-ed criticizing her university’s response to Israel and the war in Gaza. Caught on video in March outside her Somerville residence, immigration enforcement officers took her away in an unmarked vehicle.
Öztürk has been out of a Louisiana immigrant detention center since May and back on the Tufts campus. But she's been unable to teach or participate in research as part of her studies because of the termination of her record in the government's database of foreign students studying temporarily in the U.S.
In her ruling Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper wrote that Öztürk is likely to succeed on claims that the termination was “arbitrary and capricious, contrary to law and in violation of the First Amendment.”
The government’s lawyers unsuccessfully argued that the Boston federal court lacked jurisdiction and that Öztürk’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System record (SEVIS) record was terminated legally after her visa was revoked, making her eligible for removal proceedings.
“There’s no statute or regulation that’s been violated by the termination of the SEVIS record in this case,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Sauter said during a hearing last week. The Associated Press sent an email Tuesday seeking comment from Sauter on whether the government plans to appeal.
In a statement, Öztürk, who plans to graduate next year, said while she is grateful for the court's decision, she feels “a great deal of grief” for the education she has been “arbitrarily denied as a scholar and a woman in my final year of doctoral studies.”
“I hope one day we can create a world where everyone uses education to learn, connect, civically engage and benefit others — rather than criminalize and punish those whose opinions differ from our own,” said Öztürk, who is still challenging her arrest and detention.
The then-30-year-old was one of four students who wrote the opinion piece in the campus newspaper. It criticized the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Öztürk, who is Muslim, was meeting friends in March for iftar, a meal that breaks a fast at sunset during Ramadan, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai. Her student visa had been revoked several days earlier, but she was not informed of that, her lawyers said. The government asserted that terminating her SEVIS record two hours after her arrest was a proper way of informing Tufts University about her visa revocation.
A State Department memo said Öztürk's visa was revoked following an assessment that her actions “‘may undermine U.S. foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”
Without her SEVIS status reinstated, Öztürk said she couldn't qualify as a paid research assistant and couldn't fully reintegrate into academic life at Tufts.
“We have a strange kind of legal gaslighting here, where the government claims it’s just a tinkering in a database, but this is really something that has a daily impact on Ms. Öztürk’s life,” her attorney, Adriana Lafaille of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said in court.
“We are running out of time to make this right. Each day that goes by is a day that she is being prevented from doing the work that she loves in the graduate program that she came here to be part of. Each day that this happens is a day that the government is allowed to continue to punish her for her protected speech.”
Öztürk, meanwhile, has maintained a full course load and fulfilled all requirements to maintain her lawful student status, which the government hasn't terminated, her lawyer said.
SEVIS is mandated by Congress in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and administered by the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement “to collect information relating to nonimmigrant foreign students” and “use such information to carry out the enforcement functions of” ICE.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, when a SEVIS record is terminated, a student loses all on and/ or off-campus employment authorization and allows ICE agents to investigate to “confirm the departure of the student.”
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McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire.
FILE - Tufts University student from Turkey, Rumeysa Ozturk, who was arrested by immigration agents while walking along a street in a Boston suburb, talks to reporters on arriving back in Boston, May 10, 2025, a day after she was released from a Louisiana immigration detention center on the orders of a federal judge. (AP Photo/Rodrique Ngowi, File)
Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk reads from a prepared statement following a court hearing outside the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)
Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk reads from a prepared statement following a court hearing outside the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)
Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk reads from a prepared statement following a court hearing outside the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)
