Mohamed Salah and Egypt have not yet achieved the dream tournament in the African Cup of Nations. After playing two matches, two points were worthless, in addition to the national team captain suffering an injury that will keep him out of action for a few weeks.
Thus, the Liverpool player loses the decisive match in the group stage against Cape Verde, which will be held at 21:00 tonight. Somewhat surprisingly, Cape Verde have already secured a group win with six points out of six in their first two matches. Egypt ranks second with two points, while Ghana and Mozambique have one point each.
In danger of eruption
Many Liverpool supporters may have been hoping that Salah and Egypt would not go far in this year's Africa Cup of Nations, so that the Egyptian king could return to Merseyside immediately to help in the Premier League title race. Now there are already possibilities for this to actually happen in the group stage.
Egypt has everything in its hands before the last match. With their win over Cape Verde, they anyway secured second place in the group, giving them direct qualification to the knockout rounds, but if they draw or lose, they depend on other results going in their favour.
In a draw
With a draw, Egypt will have three points, and if the second match in the group stage between Mozambique and Ghana ends with a victory for one of the two teams, Egypt will anyway finish in third place in the group.
In the African Championship, there are six groups, with the four best players from the groups qualifying for the knockout rounds. So, if Egypt finishes third, it will rely on its three points being enough to be in the top four if it wants to advance in the tournament.
If Egypt qualify in third place, they will anyway face the group leaders in the round of 16, where they will also have to go through the tournament without Salah.
Harm: Mohamed Salah will not be able to help Egypt in the decisive match of the group stage.
With losses
If Egypt loses the match against Cape Verde, it will occupy third place in the group as long as Ghana or Mozambique wins their match.
In the event of a tie between Ghana and Mozambique, it will be more complicated, as all three teams will have two points, and the match will have to be decided through a tie-break.
After that, it will all depend on each team's goal difference to decide who will qualify, and with the maximum amount of bad luck, Egypt could be straight out of here already if the results go against them.
However, it will be very interesting to see whether Egypt manage to progress, and from Liverpool's point of view, a Cape Verdean win was clearly better tonight.
The match between Egypt and Cape Verde will be shown on V sport2 tonight at 10:00 pm 21:00.
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