AFCON 2021 Top Scorer: Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah surprisingly miss out on the top 5

AFCON 2021 ended with Senegal winning the trophy after defeating Egypt 4-2 in a penalty shoot-out. Despite playing in the final, neither team had a player in the top five goalscorers of the tournament. Below, livescorecz.net look at the AFCON 2021 top scorer and the top 10 goalscorers of all time.

AFCON 2021 top scorer

Surprisingly, the AFCON 2021 top scorer was not a familiar name like Mohamed Salah or Sadio Mane, but Vincent Aboubakar of Cameroon, who was playing for Besiktas at the time. In seven matches at AFCON 2021, he scored eight goals to win the Golden Boot, even though his team finished in third place. He was also just one goal short of equaling the record for most goals scored in a single AFCON tournament, held by Ndaye Mulamba, a former player of Zaire (now DR Congo).

Second on the list was another Cameroon player, Karl Toko Ekambi, with five goals. Among these, the most important was his brace against Gambia in the quarter-finals, which helped Cameroon win 2-0 and reach the semi-finals. He also scored twice against Ethiopia in the group stage and once in the round of 16 against Comoros. Together with Aboubakar, they scored 13 of Cameroon’s 14 goals at AFCON 2021.

Sadio Mane finished third with three goals at AFCON 2021. His first goal was a penalty in the opening group-stage match against Zimbabwe. He then scored the opening goal against Cape Verde in the round of 16 and added another in the 3-1 semi-final win over Burkina Faso. However, Mane’s most important contribution came in the final, when he scored the decisive penalty to secure the title for Senegal.

Mohamed Salah scored two goals during the tournament. One came in the group stage in a 1-0 win over Guinea-Bissau, and the other was in the quarter-final victory against Morocco. A notable part of Egypt’s AFCON 2021 campaign was that they played three penalty shoot-outs in the knockout rounds, winning two before losing to Senegal in the final.

10 AFCON 2021 top scorers list

1. Vincent Aboubakar, Cameroon - 8 goals

2. Karl Toko Ekambi, Cameroon - 5 goals

3. Gabadinho Mhango, Malawi - 3 goals

4. Ibrahima Koné, Mali - 3 goals

5. Sofiane Boufal, Morocco - 3 goals

6. Sadio Mané, Senegal - 3 goals

7. Ahmed Mogni, Comoros - 2 goals

8. Mohamed Salah, Egypt - 2 goals

9. Nicolas Pépé, Ivory Coast - 2 goals

10. Achraf Hakimi, Morocco - 2 goals

Top 10 AFCON goalscorers of all time

Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon tops the all-time AFCON goalscorers list with 18 goals. He scored these in 29 AFCON matches, averaging 0.62 goals per game. Eto’o also holds the record for appearing in the most AFCON tournaments, with six appearances between 2000 and 2010. He won the competition twice, in 2000 and 2002. However, his best single-tournament tally was five goals, achieved in 2006 and 2008.

Second on the list is Laurent Pokou of Ivory Coast, who scored 14 goals in just 12 AFCON matches, an average of 1.17 goals per game. He achieved this across four tournaments: 1968, 1970, 1974, and 1980. At club level, he played for Rennes and Nancy in France, without major achievements.

Another Ivorian legend, Didier Drogba, ranks seventh with 11 goals in 24 matches, averaging 0.46 goals per game across five tournaments. The former Chelsea striker never won the AFCON title. He shares the same goal total as Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah, who have also scored 11 goals for their national teams. While Mane has won titles with Senegal, Salah has missed out on the trophy.

Among the top 10, the player with the best scoring rate is Egyptian legend Hassan El-Shazly. He scored 12 goals in just eight AFCON matches, an average of 1.50 goals per game. He played in three tournaments (1963, 1970, and 1974). During his club career, he spent his entire time at Tersana from 1959 to 1978, scoring 173 goals.

Top 10 AFCON goalscorers of all time

1. Samuel Eto’o, Cameroon - 18 goals

2. Laurent Pokou, Ivory Coast - 14 goals

3. Rashidi Yekini, Nigeria - 13 goals

4. Hassan El-Shazly, Egypt - 12 goals

5. Patrick Mboma, Cameroon - 11 goals

6. Hossam Hassan, Egypt - 11 goals

7. Didier Drogba, Ivory Coast - 11 goals

8. Mohamed Salah, Egypt - 11 goals

9. Sadio Mané, Senegal - 11 goals

10. Ndaye Mulamba, DR Congo - 10 goals

In this article, Livescore CZ lists the top 10 goalscorers of AFCON 2021, as well as the top goalscorers in the history of the tournament. For more football schedule, visit our homepage.