One of the key narratives in this season’s Premier League title race is how well Liverpool will cope without Mohamed Salah when the winger heads to the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) next month. Salah is by far and away the team’s top scorer with 16 goals, seven more than nearest challenger Diogo Jota, and has eight more overall goal contributions (23) than second-placed Darwin Núñez.
The reality, however, is that we simply don’t know how long Salah will be absent. The last time he left for AFCON midway through the season in 2022, he led Egypt to the final, and if that happens again, he could miss as many as nine games, including a massive trip to title rival Arsenal at the start of February. Liverpool is currently scheduled to play only seven games between Salah’s departure after the game against Newcastle and the AFCON final on February 11, but it could yet face an FA Cup third-round replay against Arsenal, and a fourth-round tie if it progresses.
On the other hand, if, in one of the tournament’s biggest shocks, Egypt exits in the group stages, all the more unlikely since the expansion from 16 teams to 24 and the addition of four knockout slots for the best third-place teams, Salah’s involvement will conclude on January 22. In that case, he’d only be guaranteed to miss four games.
If Egypt goes out in the round of 16, Salah will miss the visit of his former club Chelsea but almost certainly return for the trip to the Emirates. Anything beyond that, and he’ll miss two further games against Arsenal and Burnley before coming back against Brentford, provided he avoids injury of course.
The big question, then, is how far we expect Egypt to go. You can never predict how an international tournament will pan out of course — they rarely go according to the form book, such is their nature —but we can go off the clues we have.
The first of those is the FIFA world rankings. Egypt currently sits in 33rd place overall, which makes it the fifth-best African side after Morocco (13th), Senegal (20th), Tunisia (28th) and Algeria (30th). Unlike the other four teams, Egypt didn’t feature at the last World Cup, losing out to Senegal in a qualifying play-off rematch of the AFCON final. That prompted the exit of Carlos Queiroz in March 2022, and his successor Ehab Galal lasted just three games before he was fired after two defeats.
Rui Vitória, appointed in July 2022, has since restored some stability, leading Egypt to 11 wins in 13 games, including an impressive 2-1 friendly victory over Belgium last year. He would help the Pharaohs finish with the fourth-best record in AFCON qualifying — 15 points from six games — but one potential area of concern is that he hasn’t won either of his match-ups against the favorites for next month’s competition. Egypt lost 3-1 to Tunisia in September, and drew 1-1 with Algeria the following month.
That surely raises concerns about a potential quarter-final meeting with Morocco, which will come to pass if both teams win their groups and their round of 16 ties. Just over a year after they made it to the semi-finals of the World Cup, the Atlas Lions will take some stopping. But if Egypt is able to topple them, then they will certainly feel they can go all the way and make amends for 2022.
