The African Cup of Nations, a tournament that exists primarily to remind European club managers that they do not, in fact, legally own the human beings they pay millions to kick a sphere of synthetic leather, has once again delivered its ritual sacrifice. This time, the altar was stained with the metaphorical blood of Mohamed Salah, a man whose ‘dream’ of winning a trophy for a country that treats him like a messianic figure has been deferred, again, by his erstwhile comrade Sadio Mane. It is a narrative so neatly packaged for the mouth-breathing masses that one almost suspects the universe of having a scriptwriter, albeit a hack who relies too heavily on recycled tropes of rivalry and redemption.

Let’s be clear: the media’s obsession with Salah’s ‘AFCON dream’ is a masterclass in the trivialization of human existence. We are invited to weep for a multi-millionaire whose trophy cabinet is already groaning under the weight of Premier League and Champions League silverware because he didn’t get to lift a specific piece of metalware in a stadium that will likely be reclaimed by the desert in a few decades. The spectacle of Senegal triumphing over Egypt is being sold as a Shakespearean tragedy, but in reality, it is just twenty-two men running around a patch of grass in a desperate bid to distract a continent—and the world—from the crushing weight of reality. The fans, those pathetic vessels of unearned national pride, scream themselves hoarse as if Mane’s success or Salah’s failure somehow validates their own stagnant lives. It is the ultimate opiate, and the dosage is getting higher.

Sadio Mane, the supposed protagonist in this chapter of the saga, is lauded for ‘destroying’ Salah’s dream. This framing is particularly amusing. It suggests a level of personal malice that likely doesn’t exist, as both men are far too professional and far too wealthy to actually care about anything other than their branding and their longevity. Mane’s Senegal won, Egypt lost, and the world’s sports commentators immediately pivoted to the most banal question imaginable: ‘Will he get another chance?’ This is the existential dread of the ticking clock, the only thing that truly terrifies the elite athlete. Salah is thirty-one. In the world of elite sport, that is ancient. He is a decaying machine, a Ferrari with a sputtering engine, and the necrotizing grip of time is tightening on his hamstrings.

The question of ‘another chance’ presupposes that there is some divine justice in sport, that if a player works hard enough and ‘dreams’ hard enough, the universe owes them a happy ending. It is a lie we tell children to keep them from realizing that life is a series of random, often cruel events. Salah doesn’t ‘deserve’ an AFCON title any more than a janitor deserves a lottery win. The sporting world’s insistence on this narrative of the ‘missing trophy’ is a testament to our intellectual bankruptcy. We cannot appreciate a talent for what it is; we must quantify it with trinkets, or else the talent is deemed ‘incomplete.’ It is a Sisyphean struggle where the boulder is made of gold and the hill is a pile of sponsorship contracts.

Furthermore, the tournament itself is a fascinating study in post-colonial irony. Here we have the finest exports of African football, men who have been refined and polished in the academies of Europe, returning to the continent to play in a tournament that the global north views as a nuisance. The administrative chaos, the pitch conditions, and the scheduling conflicts are all part of the charm, we are told. It is a ‘celebration’ of African football, which is code for ‘a chaotic distraction that we will ignore until the final.’ And in the center of it all stands Salah, the fallen king, looking into the middle distance while Mane celebrates. The irony is that while they represent their nations, they are products of a globalized football industrial complex that cares nothing for Egypt or Senegal beyond their ability to produce marketable icons.

So, will Salah get another chance? Perhaps. The tournament will roll around again, the grass will be green, and the pundits will dust off the same tired scripts. But whether he lifts the trophy or retires in a cloud of ‘what-ifs,’ the result remains the same: a profound, ringing silence. The fans will find a new idol to worship, the sponsors will find a younger face to sell sneakers, and Salah will eventually become a trivia question. The tragedy isn’t that he lost a football match; the tragedy is that we’ve been conned into believing it matters. We sit in our darkened rooms, illuminated by the glow of the screen, rooting for one millionaire over another, while the world burns and the clock ticks toward our own inevitable expiration. Mane didn’t destroy Salah’s dream; time is destroying it, just as it destroys everything else. And honestly, watching the panic set in as these titans realize their own mortality is the only part of the game worth watching.