Mané v Salah: veteran superstars dominate buildup to Senegal v Egypt Afcon semi

The Olembe Stadium, Yaoundé, 6 February 2022, the Africa Cup of Nations final. Senegal and Egypt drew 0-0. Penalties followed. The first three kicks were scored, then Egypt’s Mohamed Abdelmonem hit the post. Mohamed Abou Gabal immediately saved from Bouna Sarr but Eduard Mendy saved the fourth Egyptian effort, from Mohanad Lasheen. After four penalties each, Senegal led 3-2; Sadio Mané had the chance to win it.

Mané had missed a fifth-minute penalty in the game. He’d missed a penalty against Cameroon in the shootout after the quarter-final in Franceville in 2017. “I can’t explain how tough it was for me,” Mané said. “I was sleeping four or five hours a night, five hours maximum. I had a big pressure in my head. I would go to bed and wake up maybe at 4am and I could not sleep any more … Everybody knew I was obsessed about this tournament and wanted to win it with my country … Thinking about this penalty I can say it was one of the hardest things in my life.”

But he steeled himself, using the meditation techniques he’d recently started practising, took a long angled run, and drilled his kick low to Gabal’s right, just inside the post. Senegal had won Afcon for the first time. On the halfway line, meanwhile, Mohamed Salah pulled the hem of his shirt over his head, covering his face. The game was lost before he’d even had the chance to take his kick.

The Stade Abdoulaye Wade, Dakar, 29 March 2022, CAF World Cup qualifying playoff second leg. A fourth-minute Hamdy Fathy own-goal gave Senegal a 1-0 win, meaning the tie finished 1-1 on aggregate. Penalties again followed. Salah wasn’t going to make the same mistake again and wait to take the fifth kick. After Kalidou Koulibaly had missed Senegal’s opening effort, the forward, the green light of laser pens flickering across his face, blasted over. The outcome was the same as it had been seven weeks earlier: Mané scored the winning kick and prevailed over his Liverpool teammate.

Senegal and Egypt, Mané and Salah, will face off again in the semi-final of the latest edition of Afcon. Those two meetings four years ago understandably dominate the buildup but Mané and Salah also both played in Senegal’s two Africa Cup of Nations qualifying wins over Egypt in 2014. Five games played between the two, Salah has been on the winning side only once: the first leg of a two-legged World Cup qualifying playoff that was ultimately lost. That’s probably the major reason it seems he has a point to make in Tangier on Wednesday.

Mané and Salah are both 33, born 66 days apart on opposite sides of the continent. Mané, the elder, is the son of an imam from Bambali, on the north bank of the Casamance. His family didn’t want him to be a footballer so he ran away from home aged 15, taking the bus to Dakar. Salah was born in Nagrig, just east of the Nile. His family were less wary of football, but having made a bus journey of three-to-four hours to training with the Cairo club Al Mowkaloon and back every day, he too ended up, aged 15, leaving home to live in his country’s capital.

Their careers have run along not dissimilar lines. Both, for instance, have funded significant infrastructure projects in their home countries. But the sense at Liverpool was that their relationship was always a little spiky. “They were never best friends; each kept himself to himself,” Roberto Firmino said. “It was rare to see the two of them talking and I’m not sure if that had to do with the Egypt-Senegal rivalry in African competitions.” That reserve erupted into something more in August 2019 during a 3-0 win at Burnley in which Mané felt Salah had repeatedly not passed to him when he felt he was in the better position.

Both have insisted that their occasional flare-ups were essentially trivial, born of a mutual desire to win. “I told him,” Mané said the following day, “‘Don’t worry. It’s over. I was angry because I think you can make better passes with your talent.’” “I don’t think it [their flare-ups] affected the team,” Salah told France Football last year. “It’s human to want more, I understand that, he’s a competitor. Off the pitch we weren’t very close, but we always respected each other.”

The two enjoyed great success together, winning a Premier League title and a Champions League, but their shared history clearly adds a frisson, particularly given memories of 2022 and the possibility that this could be the final time they ever play against each other (although there is a possibility they meet in the Saudi Pro League next season). Salah has four goals in this Cup of Nations but has adorned games rather than controlled them. Mané has just one and is not as explosive as he once was, but the intelligence of his passing remains.

They are fading giants, but they are still giants. Senegal v Egypt is not just Mané v Salah, but that framing is unavoidable. And in Tangier, Salah has the chance to assuage some of the hurt of those penalties in Yaoundé and Dakar four years ago.

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