MO STRUGGLES TO FEED OFF SCRAPS
HE was the only Egypt player in long sleeves and the extra protection was required because, when all’s said and done, Mo Salah struggled to step out from the periphery. The game was approaching its last 15 minutes when he marked his presence in it, gliding into the area after Ramadan Sobhy’s return pass and drawing the foul to bring the penalty he emphatically converted. But it was over by then. After the third Russian goal, he pulled his jersey over his head, knowing that the chance to make a meaningful mark on this tournament had gone. Salah’s jet-propelled ascent to the top of the game has come in no small measure because those around him at Liverpool know instinctively where where he will be and what he might do with the ball, though what we saw last night were the consequences when he operates among those of baser metal. Salah did not look entirely match fit yet there was just no preconceived notion of how to get him into possession. Much of Egypt’s first-half attacking thrust came down the left flank, not Salah’s right, and there were moments when the return pass he expected — or others’ anticipation of his own — was just not there. So when he executed a cushioned volley, ten minutes from the break, which directed Mohamed Elshenawy’s throw into the path of Abdalla Said, the intended recipient didn’t come for it. There was watchfulness from the Russians of course, none more than Yury Zhirkov and moments when the Russian nation held its breath. His left foot shot on the spin, three minutes before half-time, after Zhirkov seemed to have blocked his way, which drifted well wide of the left hand post. The speculative strike from similar range, just before the hour, which struck the Russian defender Mario Fernandes and ran out of play. Salah’s appeal for handball was forlorn. Egypt manager Hector Cuper — told by one Egyptian journalist at his press conference that he was ‘a failure’ — said Salah’s injury affected the team. ‘He could not prepare with us in the training camp all the time,’ Cuper said. ‘He had to train alone and perhaps that meant his total physical ability was reduced. If he hadn’t been injured, he would have had three more weeks to train with us with the same intensity as the rest of the team.’ Yet even with a fully firing Salah in the ranks, success of any kind looked challenging, the team’s capacity to score has always been painfully limited. Salah didn’t linger on the pitch at the end. Even the man they call the ‘happiness maker’ has his limits.