Forget the treble. Mohamed Salah goes into Tuesday’s Champions League showdown with Paris St-Germain with a sextet on the line.

As well as the trio of team honours he is pursuing with Liverpool, it would require a myopia epidemic to deny Salah the PFA Player of the Year and the Football Writers’ Association Player of the Year, his 32 goals meaning his only genuine competition comes from Virgil van Dijk.

The other individual honour Salah craves is the Ballon d’Or. Despite a season for the ages in England, he has ground to make up with the most sceptical international spectators.

The verdict from Paris last week on Salah’s claim to be Europe’s best footballer this season was contemptuous and it did not go unnoticed by the Egyptian.

Influential football daily L’Equipe ranked the Liverpool attacker’s round-of-16 first-leg performance in the Parc des Prince as 3/10, a rating so low there was a hint of glee in its brutality.

Salah was certainly unrecognisable from the lethal winger tearing it up in the Premier League, the statistics startlingly bad for someone accustomed to such exceptionally high standards; 41 touches, two failed crosses, eight lost duels and possession squandered 16 times.

But Salah was not the only Liverpool player who toiled against a vibrant Paris St-Germain, and even on those rare occasions his attacking threat is neutralised, his work rate is beyond reproach.

L’Equipe is notorious for being tough and in normal circumstances such a derisory verdict could be brushed off as inconsequential. Targeting a world-class player with the motivation and capacity to make such extreme criticism look absurd six days later might also also be conceived as naive ahead of the Anfield return. Salah is not averse to using such swipes as lighter fuel.

Nevertheless, as any player with aspirations of winning the Ballon d’Or understands, seducing the Parisians is a critical part of the dance. It was the magazine France Football which created and gave the Ballon d’Or its name in 1956, inviting international journalists to register votes.

Last season, Rodri became only the seventh player based in England to win it, so history is not on Salah’s side. In recent years there is a sense that – like Rodri – a player must go above and beyond to draw the voters away from one of the La Liga superstars, especially as Real Madrid have shown how well-equipped they are with dummies to spit out if one of their own does not win.

Whatever the arguments about deserving nominees, there is one irrefutable fact; exiting the Champions League in the round of 16 is a guarantee of being overlooked. If Liverpool fail on Tuesday, Salah’s latest Ballon d’Or pursuit is over.

He has no need to convince anyone in England, nor in his home continent, that he has done enough to be a leading contender this season. In the midst of an extraordinary campaign in which he is on course to break a Premier League record for goal contributions, the occasional poor performance is normal. Two in a row in the Champions League, especially with the world watching such a meaningful tie, will not get the job done, though.

In truth, Salah is going to require six more stellar performances in the competition if wants to sway floating voters, and the sense of jeopardy is now peaking as he looks to add to a reasonable, but not yet amazing tally, of three goals and four assists in this year’s competition.

There may yet be a personal semi-final shoot-out between Salah and Vinicius Junior should Liverpool and the holders meet again. Van Dijk could also split the vote given he is probably the best footballer in the world right now, handicapped because he prevents goals rather than scores. Should Liverpool progress in the Champions League from this point thanks to a series of rearguard actions, Van Dijk might get what he deserved the last time Liverpool were European champions in 2019.

But Salah is the Anfield front-runner.

Speaking earlier in this season, Salah emphasised that the team honours – particularly the Premier League – was his focus more than the Ballon d’Or. He also knows that if Liverpool win the Champions League, his claim to becoming the first African to win it since George Weah will be compelling.

For all his brilliance this season, that prospect looked distant when the 32-year-old was subbed for match-winner Harvey Elliott after 86 minutes in the French capital.

Only the most naive believe the Ballon d’Or is decided by a forensic overview of a 60-game campaign rather than the fixtures that the voters believe matter most, such as the latter stages of the Champions League, European Championship or World Cup final.

With no international tournaments this summer, it is inconceivable this year’s Ballon d’Or winner will not feature in Munich on May 31.

To get there, Salah must make PSG left-back Nuno Mendes break sweat more than was necessary last week, thus ensuring his season’s ratings from the influential French, Spanish, German and Italian judges are as high as from those who will guarantee his induction into the Premier League Hall of Fame.