Karl Anka

One of the big storylines, obviously, across this whole AFCON is, can Salah do it?

It's not quite at the same level as Lionel Messi in the World Cup, but it's certainly a huge subplot here in that Mahmoud Salah should be the most talented slash most successful Egyptian football player of all time, but he's never won the African Cup of Nations.

You know, Yaya Torre has spoken about how

Because African nations are so unlikely to win the World Cup or make deep runs into the World Cup, having an African Cup of Nations medal means so much more.

Didier Jogba has spoken about this all the time, about how he deeply regrets the fact that he retired and then the Ivory Coast won it in 2015.

He's like, if I had hung on, would I have got one?

Or did I need to step aside for them to win one?

So this is a really interesting one in that the squad Egypt have...

might be, and I'm really straining and bulging my eyes here, might be the strongest Salah has.

Obviously, they are really, really big geographical political reasons as to why Egyptian football perhaps hasn't always been able to provide the best football team for Salah to go off and win AFCON.

But he needs to do it.

The problem is, this is also, I mean, this is one of Senegal's golden generations, right?

And this is also perhaps the last time Senegal will have a chance as good as this to win another AFCON with these players.

So...

I mean, if it's any time for Egypt, they needed to get it done now.

But if there's any opponent they don't want to face, it is going to be Senegal.

Most people, before a ball was kicked, said the AFCON final would be Senegal versus Morocco.

And we're almost at that point.

So we'll see.