Rui Vitoria will test new players when Egypt national football team faces Liberia in a friendly game tonight after he decided to rest Liverpool star Mohamed Salah and Nantes striker Mostafa Mohamed.
Time
14:00 ET Canada-USA | 20:00 CLT
Venue
Borg El Arab Stadium
“I decided to give Salah and Mostafa Mohamed a rest from the Liberia match, along with Ahmed Fattouh who suffered from a minor injury,” Vitoria said.
“Salah and Mostafa will play 11 games until the end of November. This is a big number,” he explained.
Salah and Mostafa were on target in Egypt’s 3-0 victory over Niger on Friday, with the Liverpool star scoring twice either side of a goal from the Nantes striker.
“There will be a chance for me to watch different players in the match against Liberia, but we will play with the same tactics we used with against Niger,” the Egypt national team coach said.
The Niger friendly was the first test for the 52-year-old Portuguese who took charge of the Egyptian national team in July after the sacking of coach Ehab Galal last April.
“We have analyzed the game and we found that we played a very good match,” Vitoria told a television program late on Sunday.
“We developed our players’ performance. I didn’t expect that they would perform as well as they did given the short period for training before the game,” the Portuguese coach added.
In a post-game press conference after the match against Niger, Vitoria had extra words of praise for Farco defender Mahmoud Hamada, 28, who performed to par in his first ever international appearance.
Vitoria has been leading a training camp for 27 local and foreign-based players in Alexandria since mid-September as part of the international break.
“Zizo and El-Wensh will return to the preparatory camp after playing for Zamalek against FC Elect Chad,” Vitoria said.
Zamalek duo Ahmed ‘Zizo’ Sayed and Mahmoud ‘El-Wensh’ Hamdi left the Pharaohs camp in Alexandria immediately after playing in the Niger game to participate in their team’s FC Elect Chad in the African Championship on Sunday.
The Pharaohs will face World number two in FIFA ranking Belgium in November.
