It is an unwritten rule at the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) that on the eve of a team’s opening game, the coach and the captain sit side by side and after offering some opening thoughts, take questions from the press.It is an unwritten rule at the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) that on the eve of a team’s opening game, the coach and the captain sit side by side and after offering some opening thoughts, take questions from the press.
In the past few years, however, Egypt have approached the summit differently. At the 2024 edition of the tournament, Portuguese coach Rui Vitoria was accompanied instead by Mohamed El Shenawy, the squad’s oldest player.
To some degree, this was in keeping with tradition because in Egypt, the captain was always chosen on the basis of his caps rather than talent or even influence.
Mohamed Salah officially became Egypt’s captain in 2021, a role he first experienced two years earlier, and that in itself was a break from the past because the next in line was Ahmed Fathy, then a 35-year-old right-back who played three times for Sheffield United in 2007.
The former West Bromwich Albion defender Ahmed Hegazy was also ahead in the pecking order but Salah was chosen because he had emerged as the most famous footballer in the country’s history.
Salah was quickly afforded the authority to make his own decisions around certain responsibilities and this meant he did not appear before the press in Abidjan until the final group game, with Egypt needing a result to progress.
Except, Salah was not playing because of injury and this made the dynamic in the room very unusual. It was already decided at that point that he was going back to England to jump-start his recovery but that only became clear a few hours later when Jurgen Klopp revealed exactly what was happening following Liverpool’s victory over Bournemouth.For Salah, the situation became messy because it made it look like Liverpool were calling the shots. One of his fiercest critics was his current coach with the Egyptian national team, Hossam Hassan, then a pundit, who suggested Salah should not return to Ivory Coast even if he miraculously rediscovered his fitness before the end of the tournament. “Back here, we have men to do the job,” he flexed.Now Hassan has to work with Salah, he is treading a more diplomatic line. The man sitting next to him in Agadir before Egypt’s opening fixture of the 2025 AFCON with Zimbabwe was not Salah but…
2025-12-23 10:30:00
