Mohamed Salah will return to Liverpool at the end of the week following Egypt’s elimination from the Africa Cup of Nations. The forward completed 90 minutes in the defeat in which Man\u00e9 netted the winner with 12 minutes to go. It was a quiet night for Salah, who failed to complete a single dribble or take a shot during his full appearance.<\/p>\n
Egypt still have the third-place play-off against Nigeria scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 17. That match will be Salah\u2019s final outing in the tournament and is set to start one hour after Liverpool kick off against Burnley, meaning it will be the only Premier League fixture he will miss.<\/p>\n
Attention at Liverpool will quickly move to European and domestic duties. The Champions League meeting with Marseille on the following Wednesday is the immediate priority. Salah may be in contention for a place in Arne Slot\u2019s squad for that fixture but could begin on the bench as he rebuilds match sharpness after international duty.<\/p>\n
Bournemouth visit Anfield in the Premier League on Jan. 24, a fixture the club expects Salah to be fit and ready for. The player and the club have had a period of separation after a turbulent close to 2025. Having fallen short of expectations on the pitch, Salah took exception to manager Arne Slot\u2019s decision to bench him and publicly threw his future at Liverpool into question with stunning accusations of betrayal.<\/p>\n
Slot insisted the situation was resolved before Salah\u2019s departure to AFCON, but the pair\u2019s reunion will bring renewed scrutiny. Any minutes spent on the bench on his return are likely to intensify discussion about the winger\u2019s long-term role at the club. For now the timeline is straightforward: the third-place game on Jan. 17 concludes Salah\u2019s AFCON commitments and he will be back with Liverpool at the end of that week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Salah will rejoin Liverpool after Egypt exit; third-place play-off v Nigeria is Jan. 17. He returns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[1211,299,1304],"class_list":["post-5972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-arne-slot","tag-benching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972","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=5972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}