Liverpool star Mohamed Salah scored twice to help Egypt beat Djibouti 3-0 in Casablanca on Wednesday and qualify for the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old has now netted nine times in a marathon qualifying campaign that began two years ago, and victory for Egypt gave them an unassailable five-point lead over Burkina Faso in Group A.<\/p>\n
Twice African Footballer of the Year, Salah helped Liverpool win the Premier League a record-equaling 20th time last season, and captured the Golden Boot award with 29 goals, AFP said.<\/p>\n
But the Egypt captain has lost his spark with Liverpool this season, scoring just three goals in nine matches in all competitions.<\/p>\n
After Ibrahim Adel put Egypt ahead on eight minutes against opponents 158 places lower in the world rankings, Salah netted six minutes later and again on 84 minutes.<\/p>\n
While Egypt have won the Africa Cup of Nations a record seven times, they have been less successful in the World Cup, qualifying just four times in 15 attempts — in 1934, 1990, 2018 and now 2026.<\/p>\n
Former Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey was among the goals as Ghana trounced the Central African Republic 5-0 in Meknes, and need one point from their final Group I match at home to Comoros to qualify.<\/p>\n
Mohammed Salisu, Alexander Djiku, captain Jordan Ayew and Kamaldeen Sulemana were the other scorers for the Black Stars, who led 1-0 at half-time.<\/p>\n
Ghana have 22 points and a vastly superior goal difference than Madagascar, who are three points behind. Mali, seeded to win the group, are out of contention with 15 points.<\/p>\n
Cape Verde came from two goals behind in Tripoli to draw 3-3 with Libya and edge closer to a first World Cup appearance.<\/p>\n
The island nation of about 550,000 inhabitants off the coast of Senegal will clinch first place in Group D if they defeat Eswatini in Praia on Monday.<\/p>\n
Known as the Blue Sharks, the Cape Verdeans are two points ahead of Cameroon, who beat Mauritius 2-0 in Saint-Pierre with Manchester United striker Bryan Mbeumo scoring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liverpool star Mohamed Salah scored twice to help Egypt beat Djibouti 3-0 in Casablanca on Wednesday and qualify for the 2026 World Cup. The 33-year-old has now netted nine times in a marathon qualifying campaign that began two years ago, and victory for Egypt gave them an unassailable five-point lead over Burkina Faso in Group …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55501,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55499\/revisions\/55501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}