{"id":242574,"date":"2026-01-13T17:12:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T17:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/242574\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T17:12:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T17:12:07","slug":"afcon-2025-mohamed-salah-and-sadio-mane-rivalry-renewed-as-egypt-face-senegal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/242574\/","title":{"rendered":"Afcon 2025: Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane rivalry renewed as Egypt face Senegal"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Mohamed Salah leads out Egypt in their 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) semi-final against Senegal, he will feel both the weight of expectation from his nation and his own personal pressure to deliver a place in the final.<\/p>\n

The North Africans are record seven-time continental champions but the most recent of those successes came in 2010, a year before the Liverpool forward’s international debut.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old was a losing finalist at the 2017 and 2021 editions – with those defeats sandwiching a last-16 exit in 2019 on home soil – and he was then injured as Egypt suffered an early exit at the 2023 finals.<\/p>\n

“Nobody, even in Egypt, wants to win this trophy more than me,” Salah said after helping his team beat Ivory Coast in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n

“I have won almost every prize. This is the title I am waiting for.”<\/p>\n

The prospect of revenge will also hang heavy in the Tangier air on Wednesday (17:00 GMT) as the Pharaohs captain will come up against former Reds team-mate Sadio Mane, who got the better of Salah on two of their past three international meetings.<\/p>\n

With both players aged 33, and Afcon to become a quadrennial tournament from 2028,<\/a> this could prove to be Salah’s last chance to bring the trophy back to Cairo after several disappointments.<\/p>\n

And, for all his silverware with Liverpool and personal honours, the feeling persists among many across Africa that a player cannot be classed as truly great until they have an Afcon title to their name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Mohamed Salah leads out Egypt in their 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) semi-final against Senegal, he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-242574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242574","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=242574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}