World Cup Preview: #32 Egypt
Previewing Egypt's chances at the World Cup
Continuing on with previewing each of the 48 teams in the World Cup today, we are taking a deeper look at Egypt.
This will be Egypt's fourth overall appearance at the World Cup, with their last coming in Russia in 2018. They have been one of the better teams in Africa since 2020, with two AFCON semifinal appearances in the last three tournaments. This may be the last time we see Mo Salah at the World Cup, so does Egypt have what it takes to get out of the group stage?
For those who do not know, I have my own International Ratings, which I have built over the years, and you can find them here.
At the end of this series, I will post my final rankings before the World Cup begins. In addition, I will be simulating the World Cup, which will likely be released the week before the tournament starts.
I will go in reverse order of my rankings, starting with my lowest-rated team and working up to my top-ranked team.
This will simply be a breakdown of each team. I will save my analysis for how they match up with each team for my group previews, which will come out a little closer to the week of the World Cup.
In case you missed it, check out my previous previews:
How did they get here?
African World Cup qualifying is really difficult. All countries are split into groups of six, with the top team in each group automatically qualifying for the World Cup and the top four second-place teams advancing to a second-round playoff.
Egypt was really impressive during World Cup qualifying, going unbeaten, conceding only two goals, and winning their group by five points over Burkina Faso.
Egypt Stats
All data is from Footystats.org
Egypt not only had a great qualifying campaign, but they went all the way to the semifinals of AFCON this past winter.
With that being said, it has to be noted how drastically they have overperformed.
After their first AFCON match against Zimbabwe, Egypt created only 4.73 xG and conceded 6.37 xG, facing fairly difficult competition.
Egypt held a lot of possession during World Cup qualifying, but that was not the case at AFCON. They averaged 49.1% of the ball, and that was with 78% possession in their first match against Zimbabwe.
In total for AFCON, Egypt created 19 big scoring chances, but 11 of those came in that match against Zimbabwe.
My point is that Egypt is a really good team when they are playing in lower-tier competitions. However, when they’ve had to play better teams in Africa, they have struggled, and in my opinion, it shows why they aren’t a top-five team in Africa.
Egypt Key Players
All data is from transfermarkt.com
Note: This is the projected roster, not the official one.
As you can see, pretty much all of Egypt’s roster plays domestically in the Egyptian Premier League. A lot of them play for Al Ahly, who have won the CAF Champions League four times since 2020. You might remember they participated in the FIFA Club World Cup this past summer, drawing with Porto and Inter Miami.
There are two big names on Egypt that are going to make or break them at this tournament.
After scoring 34 goals and dishing out 23 assists during the 2024/25 season, Mohamed Salah had a pretty down year at Liverpool purely from an end product perspective.
However, when you look at his data as a whole, I think you will see that he is still playing at an extremely high level.
image via Scout Lab
He scored nine goals in World Cup qualifying and four goals at AFCON this summer. I don’t think it’s fair to say he’s completely fallen off a cliff.
Compared to other tournaments, Salah actually has some help in attack.
Omar Marmoush has recently found his way back into the Manchester City starting XI after missing a majority of the season with injuries and AFCON duty. He gives Egypt a true number nine up top that can run the channels and also drop deep to help in build-up.
It also helps Mo Salah find space and actually get into 1 v 1s against the fullback with Marmoush’s presence in the box.
Egypt Tactics
Egypt has made a bit of a tactical transformation in recent years, trying to be more of a build-up team rather than simply playing super direct through Salah.
One example of an attempt to develop a more modern tactical approach is here, against Benin. Egypt was trying to consistently drop guys in deeper to pull the back line up.
You can see here that they want to move Mo Salah out to a wider position, have the centerbacks follow the more central forwards, and play a ball over the top to create space for him.
Egypt puts a high priority on overloading the first couple of phases of build-up to control possession and gradually move the ball up the pitch.
Here, against Angola, the centerback was able to carry the ball, but only two players are up on Angola’s last line of defense.
You can see that Egypt is really hesitant to push their fullbacks high up the pitch, worried they'll get hit quickly on the counter.
However, offensively against better competition, Egypt has struggled to create chances when playing this way, as teams are afraid of them overloading and playing through them.
Defensively, Egypt is a team that will press high at times in a man-to-man fashion and even scored their first goal in the AFCON quarterfinals off a high turnover against the Ivory Coast.
However, more often than not, Egypt will fall back into a low block; it’s a very compact 5-1-4 aimed at reducing the space between the lines.
