While Arne Slot seems to think that Liverpool\u2019s starting line-up is stronger without Mohamed Salah, the winger has been conspicuous by his absence in recent weeks, with the Reds struggling to score goals without their talisman.\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s clear that they need their Egyptian King back at Anfield as quickly as possible. Salah, though, is desperate to extend his stay at the Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco. Indeed, he\u2019s not even attempting to hide just how much the tournament means to him.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI have won almost every honour in the game,\u201d Salah said on Saturday, \u201cbut this is the one I am waiting for.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone wants to achieve something for his country, so I hope we succeed. I think there is no one in Egypt who wants to win the Africa Cup of Nations more than me. I have achieved everything except this title.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went agonisingly close twice before, of course, as Egypt didn\u2019t just lose in the final four years ago; The Pharaohs were also beaten by Cameroon in the 2017 tournament-decider. So, when Salah says he\u2019s been \u201cwithstanding\u201d the weight of expectancy for \u201ca while\u201d, he\u2019s putting it mildly. <\/p>\n
The good news for Salah is that after scoring the decisive goal in the 3-2 quarter-final victory over Ivory Coast, he\u2019s now just two games away from realising his dream.\u00a0 The bad news, though, is that Sadio Mane is once again standing in his way \u2013 because the Senegalese superstar has always been one of Salah\u2019s greatest rivals, even when they were teammates.\n<\/p>\n
He could never work out why Salah and Mane never quite clicked off the field, though, and openly wondered in his book if the tension between the two might have had something to do with \u201cthe Egypt-Senegal rivalry in African competitions\u201d.<\/p>\n
Salah and Mane only met twice in the international arena, in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in 2014, before they became teammates at Anfield three years later. However, it has been claimed that three titanic tussles in the space of eight weeks in the spring of 2022 contributed to Mane leaving Liverpool that summer.\n<\/p>\n
Again, though, while Mane was overjoyed at converting the decisive penalty in both of Senegal\u2019s shootout wins over Egypt, in the Africa Cup of Nations final and subsequent World Cup qualification play-off, he by no means revelled in Salah\u2019s misery. On the contrary, Mane was quick to console his fellow forward after slotting home his spot-kick in the AFCON decider in Cameroon.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Arne Slot seems to think that Liverpool\u2019s starting line-up is stronger without Mohamed Salah, the winger has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[114427,110410,168987,49,48,17706,172055,172056,1417,739,35416,172057,117790,561,82,157859],"class_list":["post-408378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-afcon","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-african-football","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-egypt","tag-football-rivalry","tag-lions-of-teranga","tag-liverpool","tag-liverpool-fc","tag-mohamed-salah","tag-sadio-mane","tag-senegal","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-the-pharaohs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}