Liverpool duo Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah set to feature
Saturday 22 June 2019 13:30, UK
The draw for the 2019 Africa Cup on Nations has been completed, but when and where is the tournament and who could feature from the Premier League?
The tournament runs from June 21 to July 19 in Egypt and will the first to be played in the summer after the CAF decided to move it from being held in January and February.
Each team has been put into a pot based on their CAF National Team rankings and drawn into six groups of four teams.
The top two from each group will go through to the last 16 as well as the four best-performing third-placed teams.
The groups are:
Group A: Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Zimbabwe
Group B: Nigeria, Guinea, Madagascar, Burundi
Group C: Senegal, Algeria, Kenya, Tanzania
Group D: Morocco, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Namibia
Group E: Tunisia, Mali, Mauritania, Angola
Group F: Cameroon, Ghana, Benin, Guinea-Bissau
Mohamed Salah did not feature in the latest internationals for Egypt but, if he is fit, the Liverpool forward will likely feature for the hosts as will vice-captain Mohamed Elneny (Arsenal).
Senegal captain Sadio Mane (Liverpool) is likely to be involved, along with Cheikhou Kouyate (Crystal Palace) and Idrissa Gueye (Everton).
Man City forward Riyad Mahrez should be included by Algeria along with Alex Iwobi (Arsenal), Wilfred Ndidi (Leicester) and Leon Balogun (Brighton) for Nigeria.
Crystal Palace duo Jeffrey Schlupp and Jordan Ayew could make the Ghana squad along with Christian Atsu (Newcastle), while Wilfried Zaha might be included for the Ivory Coast.
Jean Michael Seri (Fulham), Eric Bailly (Man Utd) and Serge Aurier (Tottenham) could also be called up for the Ivory Coast along with Gaetan Bong (Brighton) and Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa (Fulham) from Cameroon.
Romain Saiss (Wolves) should be included for Morocco while Tottenham midfielder Victor Wanyama may captain Kenya.
This is a good question. Because the tournament has been moved to the summer, the final will now take place on Friday July 19, which is just a few weeks before the Premier League traditionally starts.
Clubs will face a similar dilemma to that from last summer's World Cup - when the final took place on July 15 - should some of their players make it to the latter stages.
Players involved late into the World Cup were given a longer period of rest - missing pre-season and usually returning just before the first league game - and were slowly reintroduced to first-team action.
While it is a positive that players are not missing in January and February, it could mean some teams will miss their star players at the start of the season, such as Salah and Mane for Liverpool and Zaha for Crystal Palace.
