Mohamed Salah received an unexpected shock after FIFA and the Egyptian Football Association confirmed that his tally stopped at 68 goals, thus postponing his sole claim to the top spot among the all-time top scorers for the Pharaohs.
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The story began after Salah led the Egyptian national team to a resounding 5-0 victory over their Malawian guests on Friday in the third round of the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
Following the match in which Salah scored a brace, the player posted a picture on his official accounts holding the number "70", in reference to the number of his international goals that put him at the top of the all-time scorers for the "Pharaohs" national team, surpassing Hossam Hassan, whose tally stopped at 69 goals.
At approximately the same time, the official website of the Egyptian Football Association published a report on the Pharaohs' match against Malawi, and the surprise came from the official website of the same association, as it stated in its analytical report that Salah "raised his goal tally to 68 during 121 international matches."
This figure is exactly in line with an amendment made by FIFA to a report published on its website since June 22nd entitled "Mohamed Salah's top five goals with Egypt," where the player's tally was changed after the New Zealand match in the 2026 World Cup from 68 to 66 goals, so that his total goals after the Malawi brace became 68 instead of 70.
The roots of this goal difference (two goals) go back to the friendly match in which the Egyptian national team swept aside its counterpart, the Swaziland national team (currently Eswatini), with a score of 10-0 on March 22, 2013.
Despite Salah scoring two goals in that match, the international statistics regulations excluded the match from the classification of official international matches of the first category (A), due to the Egyptian national team's coaching staff making 11 substitutions during the match, which exceeds the maximum allowed for counting friendly matches in the approved international records at that time.
Based on the currently approved records, Salah needs only one goal to equal Hossam Hassan's record (69 goals), and two goals to claim the historic throne of the Pharaohs' top scorers without any statistical controversy.
Salah will soon have the opportunity to settle this matter definitively when the Egyptian national team visits Malawi next Tuesday in the fourth round of the African qualifiers, a match in which the Pharaohs also seek to strengthen their lead in Group B, which they currently occupy with 7 points.
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