One of the biggest stories in this season’s Premier League title race will be how well Liverpool fare with Mohamed Salah when they take part in the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) next month. Salah is the team’s top scorer with 16 goals.
That’s seven goals more than his closest rival, Diogo Lotta, and eight more than second-placed Darwin Nunes (23 goals). The truth is we don’t know how long Salah will be out. He last led Egypt to the 2022 finals midway through the AFCON season and, if it happens again, could miss nine games, including a trip to title rivals Arsenal in early February. Currently, Liverpool intends to play only seven games between Newcastle and APORF on February 11, but you can repeat the third round with Arsenal, and the fourth round can go further.
On the other hand, it is unlikely that 16 teams from one of the largest photos in the tournament will be expanded to 24 and add four knots for Salah, Salah, Salah, Salah, Salah and third place. The room, consciousness is realized. In this case, he is missing only four games. When Egypt came out in the 16th stage of Egypt, the industry missed the Chelsea Club, but of course it goes to the United Arab Emirates.
If he continues, he will miss two more games – against Arsenal and Burnley – before returning against Brentford, barring injury. So the big question is how far do we expect Egypt to go. Of course, you can never predict how an international tournament will play out. Tournaments are rarely played according to format.
That’s their personality. But we can rely on the information we have. The first is the FIFA World Ranking. Egypt are currently ranked 33rd overall and are the fifth best team in Africa behind Morocco (13th), Senegal (20th), Tunisia (28th) and Algeria ( 30th). Unlike the other four teams, Egypt did not participate in the last World Cup, losing to Senegal in the AFCON finals qualifying playoffs. This led to the departure of Carlos Queiroz in March 2022 and his successor, Ehab Galal, lasted just three games and was sacked after two defeats. Louis Vitoria, who took over in July 2022, regained some consistency and led Egypt to 11 wins in 13 games.
That includes an impressive 2-1 win over Belgium last year. He will help the Pharaohs to their fourth-best record in AFCON qualifiers (15 points from six games), but failure to win a game against the champions in next month’s competition is a potential concern. Egypt lost 3-1 to Tunisia in September and drew 1-1 with Algeria the following month.
This raises concerns that if both teams win their group and draw in the round of 16, they could face Morocco in the quarter-finals. Just over a year after advancing to the semi-finals of the World Cup, the Atlas Lions have no choice but to take a break. But if Egypt can topple them, they will surely feel they can do it all by 2022.
