Merciully, Mo Salah will be a Liverpool player next season, something which seemed far from certain to be the case until he signed a new two-year contract in April.
The Egyptian was the Premier League’s top scorer in 2024/25, with his 29 goals in the division playing a pivotal role in the Reds running away with the title, and Arne Slot’s side now know the fixtures they have for the upcoming campaign after those were announced on Wednesday morning.
One thing for which LFC will have to plan when the festive period rolls around is the absence of the 33-year-old due to Egypt’s involvement in the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), which this time will begin just before Christmas and finish in mid-January, having typically not started until after the New Year in the recent past.
What are the dates for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations?
Egypt’s first match in the 35th edition of AFCON is against Zimbabwe on 22 December, with their other group games pitting them against South Africa on Boxing Day and Angola three days later.
Should they make it past the opening phase, they’ll play their round-of-16 fixture on either the 3rd, 4th or 5th of January, with the quarter-finals taking place on the 9th and 10th of that month, the semi-finals on the 14th and the final on the 18th.
Salah’s nation are the third highest-ranked team at the tournament, so logic would suggest that they’ll expect to progress deep into the competition.
What games will Salah miss for Liverpool due to AFCON 2025?
Although Egypt don’t play their first match until 22 December, their squad will almost certainly assemble at least a week before the tournament. That’d mean he’ll definitely miss our last three Premier League games of 2025, which are away to Tottenham Hotspur and at home to Wolves and Leeds.
How many Liverpool matches he’ll miss in January will be contingent on how far the Pharaohs progress at AFCON, but if they make it to at least the quarter-finals, he’ll be absent for an away double header in London at the start of 2026 against Fulham and…Arsenal.
If Egypt are in the semi-finals (and subsequently either a final or third-place match), Salah will still be in Morocco by the time the Reds welcome Burnley to Anfield on 17 January, so his first Premier League match of the New Year could be away to Bournemouth the following weekend.
Guaranteed to miss: Spurs (A), Wolves (H), Leeds (H)
Likely to miss: Fulham (A), Arsenal (A)
Could plausibly miss: Burnley (H)
All in all it’s probably not the worst set of fixtures that Liverpool could’ve had in Salah’s absence, although the Reds could really do with him for their visit to the Emirates Stadium in the first week of January.
Hopefully by then he’ll be on track to match his goalscoring numbers from 2024/25 and LFC will have a nice buffer at the top of the Premier League!
