{"id":153608,"date":"2025-03-02T11:58:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-02T10:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/uncategorized\/inferior-tournament-carragher-responds-to-criticism-over-afcon-comment"},"modified":"2025-03-02T11:58:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T10:58:59","slug":"inferior-tournament-carragher-responds-to-criticism-over-afcon-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/inferior-tournament-carragher-responds-to-criticism-over-afcon-comment","title":{"rendered":"Inferior tournament: Carragher responds to criticism over AFCON comment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. <\/strong><\/span>Former Liverpool defender, Jamie Carragher has defended his claim that the Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON, is inferior to other competitions.<\/p>\n<p>The former defender has come under heavy criticism over the last week, following his comments about the competition.<\/p>\n<p>While airing his views on why Liverpool\u2019s Mohamed Salah might not be picked as the Ballon d\u2019Or winner this year, Caragher said playing for Egypt may be a major factor since the country does play in a major continental competition.<\/p>\n<p>The Egyptian forward has enjoyed a truly blistering run of form this season.<\/p>\n<p>Many are of the opinion that Salah in the run-in for the Ballon d\u2019Or this year.<\/p>\n<p>When speaking about the winger, Carragher argued that Salah playing for Egypt in AFCON posed a problem as it was not a \u201cmajor tournament as such.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There has been a lot of backlash after the comment, leading to Jamie Carragher\u2019s response on social media, insisting that AFCON could not be compared to the World Cup, Europaean championship or the Champions League.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe point I was trying to make yesterday was that Mo Salah is at a disadvantage playing for Egypt in terms of him winning the Ballon d\u2019Or. If Salah had an average season at Liverpool, but won the AFCON and was player of the tournament then I don\u2019t think he would win the Ballon d\u2019Or.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think AFCON carries the weight of other tournaments. But if Mbappe had an average season at Real Madrid but won the World Cup or Euros, then he would still have a great opportunity. It\u2019s not just about certain tournaments \u2013 [Andriy] Shevchenko and[Robert] Lewandowski were never going to win the World Cup or Euros to help their case for the prize.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s controversial at all really it\u2019s just a fact. I know [Sadio] Mane came second a few years back after winning the tournament, but that alone wouldn\u2019t have got him to that position. It was Liverpool being two games away from [winning the] quadruple that also played a big role.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not disrespectful if I feel the World Cup, Euros, Champions League are better tournaments. That\u2019s just my opinion when I watch them. Saying it wasn\u2019t a major competition was clumsy but I think most people watching could understand the point I was trying to make.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe face I pulled when Micah interjected was nothing to do with the merits of the tournament, I just knew as soon as he did what the reaction was going to be! I get a lot people didn\u2019t like what I said and that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Nigeria<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. Former Liverpool defender, Jamie Carragher has defended his claim that the Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON, is inferior to other competitions. The former defender has come under heavy criticism over the last week, following his comments about the competition. While airing his views on why Liverpool\u2019s Mohamed Salah might not be picked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":153607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18],"tags":[468,5373,254],"class_list":["post-153608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-sport","tag-afcon","tag-carragher","tag-nigeria"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Inferior tournament: Carragher responds to criticism over AFCON comment - Nigeria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/uncategorized\/inferior-tournament-carragher-responds-to-criticism-over-afcon-comment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inferior tournament: Carragher responds to criticism over AFCON comment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. Former Liverpool defender, Jamie Carragher has defended his claim that the Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON, is inferior to other competitions. The former defender has come under heavy criticism over the last week, following his comments about the competition. 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