There are footballers who define an era, and then there is Mohamed Salah. After a career that has included multiple Premier League titles, Golden Boots, a Champions League, and FWA Footballer of the Year honours three times, the Egyptian King is finally here — at the World Cup — chasing the one honour that has always been just out of reach.
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Egypt meet Belgium in Seattle's Lumen Field in one of the most anticipated group stage clashes of the 2026 World Cup. For Salah, who announced earlier this year that he will leave Liverpool at the end of this season, this is perhaps the most significant match of his career. A stage he has worked his entire career to reach.
A Career Defined by Everything Except This
Salah's record at Liverpool is staggering. In the 2024-25 season alone, he became the first player in Premier League history to win the Golden Boot, Player of the Season, and Playmaker of the Year in a single campaign. He scored 29 goals and registered 18 assists — 47 goal involvements in a 38-game season, the highest total ever recorded in English top-flight history.
Yet for all his club brilliance, Salah's international journey with Egypt has been one of near-misses and heartbreak. Egypt qualified for the 2018 World Cup in Russia — Salah's first — but he arrived injured and never truly impacted the tournament. Egypt were eliminated in the group stage. Four years later, Egypt failed to qualify for Qatar 2022 entirely, losing a play-off on penalties.
And so 2026 feels like destiny. At 34, with his extraordinary Liverpool chapter drawing to a close, Salah has one final opportunity to add a World Cup to everything else. The motivation could not be higher.
Belgium Are Not Easy Opposition
It would be naïve to think Egypt's path will be smooth. Belgium, even in the post-golden generation era, remain a side with genuine quality. Their Group G opener presents Egypt with a serious test, and the outcome will likely define the shape of the entire group.
Egypt's strength lies in their defensive organisation and their ability to hit teams on the counter. With Salah as the focal point of their attacking threat, they have the capacity to hurt any side from a set piece or a transition moment. But Belgium will have the quality to impose themselves for long periods.
The Greatest Chapter
What makes this World Cup appearance so emotionally resonant for Egyptian football is everything it represents. A nation that has produced one of the game's genuine all-time greats, waiting patiently for the moment their hero gets to perform on the very biggest stage.
Salah, for his part, has spoken about how much it means to him. Not just the competition itself, but the chance to represent Egypt in front of a global audience, to show what African football can produce, to leave something on this World Cup that generations of fans will talk about long after he retires.
Whether Egypt advance through Group G or not, the image of Mohamed Salah at his first fully fit World Cup — running at defenders, tracking back, willing his country forward — will be one of the defining images of this tournament. Sometimes the journey to a moment matters as much as the moment itself. And this one has been a very long time coming.
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