Mohamed Salah arrives at the Africa Cup of Nations with unfinished business. Despite two Premier League titles and the Champions League with Liverpool, the continental trophy remains absent from his record after two previous final defeats with Egypt.<\/p>\n
That gap was placed under sharp focus on Channel 4 as Egypt reached the semi-final. Former midfielder Jay-Jay Okocha warned: \u201cIn Africa you might win whatever trophy with your club, if you don\u2019t win anything for your nation, they don\u2019t regard you as a legend.\u201d His point was echoed by Mikel John Obi: \u201cThis man here will be looking to get his hand on this tournament because he hasn\u2019t won it. You can talk about the Premier League and the Champions League, but he has to win the AFCON.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salah has been central to Egypt\u2019s progress. He has featured in four of the team\u2019s five matches at the tournament, scoring in each appearance and supplying his first assist of the competition in Saturday\u2019s 3\u20132 win over holders Ivory Coast.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on that victory, Salah said: \u201cIt was a perfect win, but as I said before, we are fighting for our country.\u201d He added: \u201cHopefully we go through the next game as well, it\u2019s against a tough opponent, but we will give our best. We are fighting so hard, you can see the players, nobody is holding anything back. We are just carrying on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Egypt now prepare for Wednesday\u2019s semi-final against Senegal. Salah\u2019s involvement in the latter stages of the tournament carries implications for his club availability. His return to Liverpool will be delayed, with the Reds confirmed to be without him for Saturday\u2019s meeting with Burnley. The midweek Champions League fixture with Marseille is now the earliest possible match for his comeback.<\/p>\n
The AFCON final is scheduled for Jan. 18. If Egypt reach that match, Salah may not rejoin Liverpool until the trip to Bournemouth the following weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Okocha and Mikel insist Salah must win AFCON to cement his legacy as Egypt reach the semi-finals. .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5942,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961,175],"tags":[1211,1047],"class_list":["post-5943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-liverpool","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}