Egypt

The first thing you might notice upon examining national team legend Hossam Hassan's squad list for this tournament is that it contains four goalkeepers - the only such list at this tournament (although Tunisia did the same in 2022). While the reason for this hasn't been explicitly given, what we do know is that incumbent starter Mohamed El Shenawy's place is very much in question, having served a suspension in the Egyptian Premier League for striking a referee. He has seemingly been supplanted at both club and country level by Mostafa Shobeir, who has performed well in his place.

Having dedicated a full paragraph to that oddity, we can turn our attention to Egypt's tactical setup, which is not too radical: a 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1 in possession looking to build through Mohamed Salah, and a vertically compact 5-4-1 / 5-3-2 without the ball. Occasionally Egypt will pursue a man-oriented press out of this shape, but for the most part they are sitting deep. Egypt's primary tactical conundrum will be building an attack that doesn't rely as heavily on the aging Salah. Omar Marmoush is a phenomenally talented striker, but hasn't offered as much in creation as one would have hoped. Emam Ashour performed admirably as the number 10 at AFCON and will be leaned on here, but another intriguing option has emerged more recently in winger Ibrahim Adel, who can provide pressing and 1v1 dueling off the bench.