EGYPT

Hany has spent his entire career at Al Ahly where he has become one of the most decorated right-backs in African club football. He was promoted to the first team in 2014-15 and has since made more than 390 senior appearances for Al Ahly, winning eight league titles, four CAF Champions League trophies, and six Egyptian Super Cups. Hany’s play style is defined by his pace and stamina that allows him to operate as an attacking threat down the right flank. He has 40 international caps for the national team at the time of writing and has been a regular participant in Al Ahly's memorable continental campaigns.

The Egyptian King needs little introduction, and his career has become a permanent argument against ceilings. In December, he became the player with the most goal involvements at a single club in Premier League history, with 277, surpassing Wayne Rooney. No one has won more Golden Boot awards in the league’s history than his four (joint-top with Thierry Henry), and he is the highest scoring foreign player in the league. Salah has led Egypt to two Africa Cup of Nations finals in 2017 and 2021, and he was named in the team of the tournament on each run. His defining national team moment, however, remains the stoppage time penalty against Congo in October 2017 that sent Egypt to the 2018 World Cup and ended a 28-year absence from the competition. Since announcing that he will call time on his storied nine-year spell at Liverpool, he has played with a certain freedom, despite not being at his best this season. Salah has scored 65 international goals at the time of writing, second on his country’s all-time list and chasing the record held by Hossam Hassan, Egypt's head coach. As captain and the focal point of the squad, he remains the player around whom successive coaches have built their plans.

Mostafa Mohamed Zaki Abdelraouf – AKA Ziko – has taken the long road into the national team. From Shibin El-Kom he worked his way through Haras El Hodoud, ZED and Pyramids to take his place among Egypt’s elite. His proud mother says his rise came after “years of effort and challenges”, adding that he had to take responsibility too early in life when his father died when Ziko was just 11. His Egypt debut could hardly have gone better. In the warm-up friendly against Russia in Cairo he came on and scored the only goal of the match with a second-half header. Afterwards he said that “even if I had scripted the scenario myself, I could not have imagined my debut going this way”. Ziko is not expected to be a starter this summer – Egypt’s positions up front are crowded, with Mohamed Salah, Omar Marmoush, Trezeguet, Ibrahim Adel and others ahead of him. But his value may be as a bench player who can cover several attacking roles and arrive without the burden of expectation carried by the bigger names.

Growing up, Shobeir could hardly have escaped football's gravity. His father, Ahmed Shobeir, is one of Egypt's most celebrated goalkeepers as the man between the sticks at the 1990 World Cup and at Al Ahly over a 13-year career. His son has followed in those footsteps, joining Al Ahly's academy before making his professional debut in 2020. Since then, he has established himself as a reliable presence for his club that is always calm under pressure. The 26-year-old kept nine consecutive clean sheets in the CAF Champions League – a competition record – on the way to his third continental trophy during the 2023-24 season and Fifa described him ahead of the Club World Cup as "impregnable".