Following Salah’s footsteps: The best forwards in the top 5 African leagues – data analysis

Normally, the best African players move to Europe very young before making any kind of impact in their local leagues. However, this isn’t always the case and some players’ careers take them to the best leagues in Africa before making a move to the highest level. Mohamed Salah is a great example, having played 44 games for El Mokawloon SC in Egypt before signing for Basel.

In this data analysis, we’ll have a look at the forwards in the top 5 African leagues. According to the CAF, the best five leagues in the continent are the Moroccan Botola Pro Inwi, the Egyptian Premier League, the Tunisian Ligue 1, the Algerian Ligue 1 and the South African Premiership.

We have taken the data from Wyscout and it has all the forwards (strikers, wingers and attacking midfielders) with more than 700 minutes played in the last calendar year.

Goal contributions

The first thing we’re looking at is the goal contributions (goals and assists). In the graph below, we have the expected goal contributions (expected goals plus expected assists) per 90 on the x-axis and goal contributions per 90 on the y-axis. The colour of the dots represents the total goal contributions, going from 1 (red) to 28 (dark green).

The first standout player here is Tshegofatso Mabasa (24, South Africa) a striker who plays for Orlando Pirates in his home country. Mabasa has 0.9 goal contributions per 90 (all goals), exactly as expected (0.9 xGC per 90). However, Mabasa had some injuries and was absent from lots of games in the last year so his excellent per 90 statistics only amounted to 8 goals in total. If he manages to stay fit, he will surely come back to the national team and be an important player in the DStv Premiership.

Another very interesting player when looking at goal contributions is Mohamed Sherif (25, Egypt), who plays for Al Ahly in the Egyptian Premier League. Sherif has 0.84 goal contributions per 90 from an expected 0.78. With a total of 23 goal contributions (21 goals and 2 assists) in the last 365 days, Sherif was a key player in Al Ahly’s CAF Champions League-winning campaign and is becoming an important player for Egypt with two goals in his first four caps. Born in 1996, he still has time to make an impact in European football.