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Elections in Egypt: how Salah “defeated” one of the candidates

After three days of presidential elections in Egypt, the current President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, won with 92% of the votes, defeating his only official opponent Moussa Mostafa Moussa. However, it is not Abdel who is attracting the most attention, but Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah.

The Egyptian was the unexpected choice of around 1 million Egyptians, who crossed out the names of both candidates and wrote the name of the Premier League top scorer on the ballots. In fact, with 5% of the votes, Salah technically defeated Moussa, who won just 3%.

https://twitter.com/MastiSports/status/980026544612519936

Salah is an idol in Egypt, and the reasons are hardly surprising: firstly, because Salah led the way in sending his team to the World Cup in Russia for the first time in 28 years, when his 94th-minute penalty against Congo clinched qualification.

Besides that, Salah is currently the Premier League top scorer with 29 goals, while also leading the race for the European Golden Boot, ahead of names as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

He also has an impressive record for his country with 33 goals in 55 appearances.

Naturally, news of Salah’s popularity in his country’s elections spread to social media, with a typical array of quirky and comedic antics.

Featured Image: Imad Abdel-Samad, Creative Commons

Author

  • José Bourbon

    José Bourbon was born in Lisbon, Portugal. He completed his first degree in Social and Cultural Communication at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in Lisbon. In the summer of 2015 he had the opportunity to work alongside some of the best journalists in Portugal during an internship at Expresso, one of the most famous newspapers in Portugal. He also played a part in the creation of BETup – an entrepreneurship news website that he worked on for six months. José currently writes for Winept, a Portuguese website dedicated to wine, but sports journalism is his main passion, specifically tennis and football. It goes without saying, José is also a Sporting and Portugal fan.

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