Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The attention of football fans is directed to the expected historic confrontation between the teams of Argentina and Egypt in the final of the 2026 World Cup, which will witness an exciting and unprecedented clash of two stars. Lionel Messi and Mohamed Salah.
This match represents a special battle between the ‘King’ and the ‘Pharaoh’, as it is impossible to talk about this match without focusing on the current most famous players of both countries, and perhaps the most important ever in the history of both teams.
The Spanish “Marca” newspaper confirmed The numbers prove the dominance of Lionel Messi and Mohamed Salah in the numerical history of the Argentina and Egypt national teams, as both will be in the starting lineup today as captains and talismans of their teams with terrifying numbers.
The two stars have crossed the 110-cap mark, with Messi making 203 appearances compared to Salah’s 118. They both hold the goalscoring record as Messi has scored 124 goals while Salah has 66 goals behind Hossam Hasan who has 69 goals and who is currently coaching the Pharaohs.
This match will see the two stars meet for the first time at national team level, although they have previously met twice at club level, when Messi was at Barcelona and Salah was at Roma and Liverpool respectively.
The Egyptian star failed to get a win in those encounters and in fact Messi scored a brace in the second leg of the 2018-19 Champions League campaign as Barcelona won 3-0 before Liverpool turned the tables on the English side with a 4-0 win at Anfield.
The shot of the two leaders holding hands at the start of the match is expected to attract worldwide attention, as the current tournament is theoretically and still without official confirmation the last major tournament in which the two stars will compete.
Messi’s World Cup career will end at six World Cups in the USA, while Salah’s second World Cup will also end here.
Lionel Messi has a much longer international career than the Egyptian star, considering that he is five years older than Salah.
Messi scored his first cap on 17 August 2005 in a friendly against Hungary, where he was strangely sent off, while Mohamed Salah made his national team debut on 3 September 2011 in a 2-0 loss to Sierra Leone and scored his first official goal a month later in a 6-goal 3–0 win over Niger.
The comparison shows Messi’s vast superiority at the level of major tournaments and titles, and while Egypt are considered the masters of the African continent and the most crowned African Cup of Nations champions with seven titles, he missed the 2022 World Cup, limiting Salah’s World Cup credits to just two appearances in 2018 and 2018.
Mohamed Salah is almost close to Messi’s number of appearances in continental championships as Mo has played in 5 African Cup of Nations compared to Messi’s 7 Copa America, but the Argentine star has won two continental titles while Salah has settled for runner-up with the maximum achievement twice and in 2027.
Marca say the comparison, ahead of their clash at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta tonight, is not intended to put Salah on the same level as Messi, who is difficult to compare to another player, but rather to show the great value the Egyptian star represents at the level of the African continent.
Salah goes down in the historical accounts as one of the five greatest players in the history of the African continent as he shares the giants’ podium alongside notable names such as Samuel Eto’o, Didier Drogba and others.
