Egyptian police have recovered Mohamed Salah’s Africa Cup of Nations runners up medal among other valuable goods that were stolen from his villa.
Two men have been arrested in connection with an alleged burglary at the Liverpool star’s Cairo home. Egypt's Ministry of Interior said one of those arrested was a former security guard at the residential complex.
Among the other goods stolen during the burglary, which took place at the beginning of March, were three pairs of adidas football boots.
Salah will captain Egypt in their Africa Cup of Nations qualifying double-header against Malawi this month.
Confirmation of the items being recovered and arrested arrived a couple of hours before Salah lined up for Liverpool in their Champions League round of 16 defeat away to Real Madrid last night.
The 30-year-old was unable to lead Jurgen Klopp’s team to a fightback at the Bernabeu after last season’s beaten finalists were thrashed 5-2 at Anfield in the first leg.
Karim Benzema scored with 12 minutes remaining in Madrid to inflict another defeat on the Reds, who had struggled to create much during a tame exit.
“Our job is to squeeze absolutely everything out of this season,” Klopp said, with their focus now solely trained on finishing in the top four in the Premier League. Liverpool are six points behind Tottenham Hotspur with a game in hand but lost to relegation strugglers Bournemouth last weekend, six days after a record win over Manchester United.
“It’s a strange one,” Klopp added last night. “Our recent two games were obviously a sensational performance against Manchester United – which is a real good football team – and then a really bad performance against Bournemouth, which is a good football team as well, but we should not lose this kind of game.
“It put us then under more pressure. If we could have three points then I think everybody really could have felt, or smelled our breath. But [instead] there is a distance again because other teams won their games. It is clear, we want to be top four, but if we can do that, we will decide on the pitch, not here in the press conference.
“With the history we have in this competition, we start usually with the idea of winning it, to be honest. We reached the final a few times. We didn’t win the final that often, that’s true, but we were there three times in the last few years. It is the competition and we want to be part of it every year.
