There were no apologies from Mohamed Salah to his teammates in red on Monday night, with Egypt\u2019s players grateful to Liverpool\u2019s troubled superstar for conjuring a stoppage-time winner.<\/p>\n
After failing to capitalise on a dominant start, the seven-times Afcon winners required a stunning equaliser from Manchester City\u2019s Omar Marmoush and Salah\u2019s late winner to spare their blushes against the aptly named Warriors from Zimbabwe, who have never progressed beyond the group stages.<\/p>\n
Salah had sparkled initially before fading as his lack of recent playing time at Liverpool took its toll, but ended up making the decisive contribution as he swivelled in the penalty area to score with a scuffed left-foot half volley.<\/p>\n
The sparsely populated bowl of the Grand Stade d\u2019Agadir, which began the game with around 10% of its 45,000 seats occupied before the lowest of its three tiers eventually came close to filling up, is not the grandest of stages on which the so-called Egyptian King usually thrives, but neither is this tournament. For all the adoration he inspires in Egypt and throughout Africa the lack of an Afcon winner\u2019s medal is the one major absence on Salah\u2019s CV.<\/p>\n
After losing in two finals in 2017 and 2022<\/a>, Salah is desperate to fill that gap, all the more so given the possibility that his club career in Europe may be winding down, with several Saudi Pro League clubs ready to pounce on his unhappiness at Anfield<\/a>.<\/p>\n Salah\u2019s situation in this tournament could not be more different from the previous Afcon in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire two years ago when, ironic as it may now seem, he was accused of prioritising club over country. Egypt\u2019s greatest player left that tournament early to return to Liverpool for treatment after a hamstring injury during a group stage game against Ghana, with the country\u2019s most-capped player Ahmed Hassan accusing him of letting the nation down.<\/p>\n Omar Marmoush celebrates after equalising with a piercing run and shot from the left. Photograph: Mosa\u2019ab Elshamy\/AP<\/p>\n Salah appears to have found salvation in being reunited with his countrymen on this occasion, however, with Egypt\u2019s coach Hossam Hassam saying \u201che regains his strength with the national team\u201d, as he demonstrated by guiding them to a hard-fought win.<\/p>\n It was clear that the start that Salah has the freedom to roam as he wishes in this team, drifting into central areas and dropping deep to pick up possession in his own half as he saw fit. He remains most threatening from the right however, and twice in the space of one first-half minute he came close to conjuring the opening goal. A lofted cross to Tr\u00e9z\u00e9guet produced a header that was saved by Washington Arubi before Salah cut in from the right and had a shot from the edge of the penalty area blocked. Salah created another chance in the 12th minute for Eman Ashour, which he slashed wide, his last notable contribution of a truncated evening, which ended in the 34th minute when Hassam replaced him with big striker Mostafa Mohamed in a tactical switch after falling behind. Zimbabwe\u2019s goal stunned Egypt, who should have been cruising at that stage. Instead they were caught on the counterattack, with Emmanuel Jalai crossing from the right to Prince Dube, who produced a wonderful turn and finish from the edge of the area.<\/p>\n Egypt continued to dominate in terms of possession, with Marmoush spurning several chances before delivering a sumptuous equaliser in the 64th minute. He collected the ball with immaculate control on the left flank before racing away from Godknows Murwira and beating Arubi with a powerful finish from a tight angle.<\/p>\n As Egypt pushed for a winner, their substitute Ahmed \u201cZizo\u201d Sayed spurned two further chances, the latter created by Salah, who inevitably had the final word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were no apologies from Mohamed Salah to his teammates in red on Monday night, with Egypt\u2019s players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[106],"class_list":{"0":"post-2510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zimbabwe","8":"tag-zimbabwe"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}