Africa Cup of Nations Final Best Bets, Odds & Projections: Senegal vs. Egypt Betting Preview (Feb. 6)

Senegal vs. Egypt

We have reached the Africa Cup of Nations final after a crazy couple of semifinals that has seen Egypt win their second penalty shootout in the knockout round.

Liverpool teammates Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah will square off on Sunday to see who will be crowned the champion of Africa.

Senegal has yet to be defeated in this tournament and has only conceded a total of two goals in six matches, while also scoring a whopping eight goals in the knockout stage. Senegal was the pre-tournament favorite to take home the title, so we'll see if they can finish the job and be crowned as deserving champions.

Slow Tourney Start Doesn't Haunt Senegal

Senegal started the tournament slow, scoring only one goal throughout the entire group stage. However, that didn't mean they weren't creating chances. In those three group stage outings, Senegal created 3.73 expected goals, but just couldn't find the back of the net. Then things started to change in the knockout round.

Senegal breezed past Cape Verde in the Round of 16 with a 2-0 win and followed that victory by ending both Equatorial Guinea and Burkina Faso's Cinderella stories, trashing them both a 3-1 margin.

Senegal in this tournament has put up some really impressive underlying metrics. In six matches, they've created 9.8 expected goals overall for the tournament, have the second most high turnovers, and are third best in PPDA, per Opta.

Not only does Senegal have much more talent overall than Egypt, considering their overall transfer value, per transfermarkt.com is $343,150,000, while Egypt's is $161,250,000 ($100 million of it is Mohamed Salah), but the visualization below shows that Egypt has been getting by on smoke and mirrors.

Egypt Finding Magic in Knockout Round

Egypt once again won on penalties against Cameroon on Thursday, making it their third straight extra time win in the knockout stage. I have no idea how much Egypt has left in the tank for the final after literally playing an full 90 extra minutes of soccer than Senegal.

The Egyptian story of getting to the final will go down in the record books as one of the luckiest runs in an international soccer competition, just take a look at how they've performed in normal time throughout the Africa Cup of Nations:

Mohamed Salah is the best attacker in the world, there is no denying that. However, he has no talent around him on the Egypt squad, which has allowed most teams to isolate him. Salah has created the most chances of anyone in the tournament, but has only created 2.1 xG total in six matches.

Betting Analysis & Pick

The ride ends here for Egypt. Playing three straight extra time matches in the heat and humidity of Cameroon takes a huge toll. Not to mention the fact that they've been drastically over performing this entire tournament.

Since I have Senegal projected at -171, I love the value on them at +115 odds via DraftKings to win the title in regular time and will make it my top pick.

Pick: Senegal ML (+115)