{"id":212645,"date":"2025-12-26T23:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T23:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/212645\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T23:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T23:37:08","slug":"mohamed-salah-penalty-sends-pharaohs-through-to-afcon-knockout-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/212645\/","title":{"rendered":"Mohamed Salah penalty sends Pharaohs through to AFCON knockout stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Egypt 1 South Africa 0\n<\/p>\n

\"Egypt's<\/p>\n

Egypt’s Mohamed Salah is challenged by South Africa’s Teboho Mokoena during the Africa Cup of Nations group B soccer match in Agadir, Morocco: AP Photo\/Themba Hadebe<\/p>\n

Egypt are through to the knockout phase of the Africa Cup of Nations after beating South Africa in a controversial Group B showdown on Friday.<\/p>\n

Mohamed Salah\u2019s penalty was enough for the seven-time AFCON winners to make it two wins from two in Morocco and progress to the round of 16 with a game to spare.<\/p>\n

A cagey first half at the Adrar Stadium came to life inside the final five minutes when Egypt were awarded a controversial penalty when Salah was struck in the face by Khuliso Mudau.<\/p>\n

The contact did appear to be accidental and a lack of appeal from Salah prompted surprise when play was paused for a VAR review.<\/p>\n

Following a lengthy stoppage, referee Pacifique Ndabihawenimana went over to the pitchside monitor and after seeing the incident again, pointed to the penalty spot.<\/p>\n

Salah, who scored a stoppage time winner for Egypt in their AFCON opener against Zimbabwe at the beginning of the week, kept his cool and produced a panenka to put his nation ahead.<\/p>\n

No sooner were the Pharaohs ahead were they reduced to ten men after Mohamed Hany was sent-off for two bookable offences right on the stroke of half-time.<\/p>\n

That decision gave Bafana Bafana the incentive to take the game to Egypt in the second half but they couldn\u2019t find a way past Mohamed El Shenawy who used up all of his experience to keep his nation ahead.<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old made fine saves to deny Mudau and Aubrey Modiba before bravely clawing the ball away from the former in the box following a knockdown by Lyle Foster.<\/p>\n

South Africa appeared to be on course to salvage a point when there was a VAR review for the ball hitting Yasser Ibrahim\u2019s hand on the line of the penalty box.<\/p>\n

However, Ndabihawenimana decided it was not a penalty after reviewing the footage, and with that went Bafana Bafana\u2019s hopes of extending their long unbeaten run.<\/p>\n

This result means Egypt are guaranteed to finish top of Group B, meaning they will face one of the best third-placed teams from Group A, C or D.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, South Africa will seal their place in the knockout phase as runners-up by beating Zimbabwe in their final group stage game next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Egypt 1 South Africa 0 Egypt’s Mohamed Salah is challenged by South Africa’s Teboho Mokoena during the Africa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,61605,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-212645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-mo-salah","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}