Salah and Mahrez absence leaves Qatar World Cup without region's top stars

The first World Cup to take place on Mena soil will be without the region’s leading player, the footballer who may well be the finest in the world on current form.

The absence of Mohamed Salah from Qatar 2022 deprives the tournament of a figurehead and the circumstances around Egypt’s failure to qualify are another bitter chapter in the saga of Salah and World Cups.

The Liverpool striker missed the first Egyptian penalty in the shoot-out that on Tuesday settled 210 attritional minutes of play-off in favour of Senegal. The distracting beams of several laser pens were directed from the crowd into the face of Salah as he prepared his spot-kick, as they were at Egypt goalkeeper Mohamed El Shenawy as he faced Senegal’s spot-kickers.

Salah skied his penalty, teammates Zizo and Mostafa Mohamed failed to covert theirs, and although two Senegal players had fluffed their penalties, by the time Sadio Mane took the fifth for the home side, he had the chance to win the tie without it going into sudden-death.

Mane converted, bringing to an end a trio of contests that have brought he and Salah, Liverpool colleagues, into concentrated, high-stakes rivalry over the last eight weeks. In February, Senegal beat Egypt in Yaounde, Cameroon, to win the African Cup of Nations final. There a 0-0 draw, in which Mane had a penalty saved, was settled by Senegal winning the shoot-out.

In Cairo last week, Egypt won the first leg of the World Cup play-off 1-0 and would hold that lead in the tie for precisely 90 minutes. In the almost perfect symmetry of parity that has characterised this Egypt-versus-Senegal marathon, an own goal after four minutes in each leg constitute the only goals to have been scored in five-and-and-half-hours of open play