Afcon 2023 hits halfway stage: Vanishing stars, managerial sack race and goals galore

Sebastien Haller lords it over the 34th Africa Cup of Nations. It’s hard to travel more than a hundred yards along an urban road in Ivory Coast without seeing him, smiling here, looking focused there, on advertising billboards for everything from mobile networks to mineral water to electrical appliances.

To be the emblematic, high-profile centre-forward of the host nation of an Afcon is to be a magnet for commercial endorsements.

Trouble is that Haller the omnipresent brand ambassador is currently Haller the utterly-absent player, the ankle injury he sustained with his club Borussia Dortmund last month having kept him from playing any part in Ivory Coast’s perilous journey through the group phase.

He’s been longed for through successive defeats, including a 4-0 thrashing by Equatorial Guinea. The Elephants’ place in the knockouts, where Haller hopes to be fit enough to appear, was achieved only because their three points made them the fourth-best of the third-placed finishers.

Haller is not the only vanishing star. Mohamed Salah has controversially left the Egypt camp to have treatment in Liverpool on the muscle problem he picked up on match day two. Unless the Pharaohs reach the final, Salah may not be back.

Riyad Mahrez, dropped from eliminated Algeria’s first XI after two ineffective starts, is gone. Andre Onana, the Manchester United goalkeeper, has played one match of Cameroon’s three and, going into the last-16 tie against Nigeria, is no longer the man in possession of the Indomitable Lions’ gloves.

Even Africa’s star coach is obliged to retreat from the pitchside spotlight. Morocco’s Walid Regragui must, against South Africa on Tuesday, see out the second game of a touchline ban imposed for his hot-tempered