Mohamed Salah and Sam Kerr win PFA player of the year awards

The Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah has been voted the Professional Footballers’ Association’s men’s player of the year, with Chelsea’s Sam Kerr collecting the women’s award.

The Manchester City midfielder Phil Foden retained the PFA young player of the year award, with the club’s forward Lauren Hemp named the women’s best young player for the third consecutive season.

Salah topped the poll, which was voted for by PFA members, ahead of Kevin De Bruyne, who had won for the previous two years and was an integral part of the City team that beat Liverpool to the Premier League title by one point.

The Manchester United forward Cristiano Ronaldo and the Tottenham striker Harry Kane had also made the shortlist, along with Salah’s Liverpool teammates Virgil van Dijk and Sadio Mané.

This is Salah’s second PFA player of the year trophy after he previously won in 2018. This season he helped Jürgen Klopp’s side to win the Carabao and FA Cups, and to reach the Champions League final, where they lost to Real Madrid.

The Egypt international Salah, who finished as the Premier League’s joint top scorer alongside Tottenham’s Son Heung-min with 23 goals, was announced as the PFA men’s player of the year at a virtual ceremony on Thursdayyesterday.

“It’s a great honour to win a trophy, individual or collective, and this one is big, so very happy and very proud of that,” said Salah, who was also voted the men’s footballer of the year by the Footballer Writers’ Association.

“This one is a really good one to win, especially because it’s voted by players. It shows you that you’ve worked really hard and you get what you worked for. I have my room with trophies in a cabinet and I made sure that I had another space for one more. I always keep space