Why Salah is a special case for Egypt

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Also See: Why AFCON is legacy-defining for Salah He has to stay, does Isak injury put an end to Salah exit? "Back here, we have men to do the job," he flexed.Now Hassan has to work with Salah, he is treading a more diplomatic line.

The man sitting next to him in Agadir before Egypt's opening fixture of the 2025 AFCON with Zimbabwe was not Salah but Trezeguet, the former Aston Villa winger, though it did not seem to be a problem.With Egypt, Salah largely gets what he wants, speaks when he likes, the world rotates around him and everyone accepts it. Since then, he has been temporarily marginalised by his club for suggesting he had been "thrown under the bus" having not been selected from the start in three matches following that defeat, in an outburst during which he also claimed he no longer had a relationship with the head coach, Arne Slot.His and Egypt's performance followed a similar pattern to their opening fixture in this tournament nearly two years ago.

With doubts about whether Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda will be able to host in 2027 because of elections coming in two of those countries, maybe Salah will have only one chance to deliver what Egypt expects of him after Morocco.He is judged in Egypt against the achievements of the group of players that went immediately before him, a team that won three AFCON titles in a row between 2006 and 2010 but never qualified for the World Cup, something Salah has done twice. Yet the state knows the same influence stretches beyond the boundaries of Egypt, unlike the country's football hero before him, Mohamed Aboutrika, who has lived in exile in Qatar for almost a decade because of his political beliefs.His name has never mattered outside North Africa or the Middle East but Salah has to be kept sweet because he straddles two worlds so well and he is the first footballer from the country to do so.