AFCON 2025 runs December 21 through January 18 in Morocco, and the mandatory release window opened today. FIFA trimmed a week off that window, which was meant to help clubs but mostly just makes the handoffs messier.

The scheduling part gets all the attention. But that might be the wrong way to look at it. What actually matters is which players leave—and for a handful of clubs, AFCON pulls out the one guy the whole system depends on. Not depth. The player everything runs through.

Salah

Liverpool’s situation is the messiest. Salah heads to Egypt with his contract still technically running through 2027, but the relationship has gone sour again in a pretty public way. Whatever’s happening there, it’s not resolved, and now he’s leaving for the busiest stretch of the season.

Salah is the player Liverpool turns to when the game gets tight and nothing else is working. Without him they still have quality, obviously, but they lose the guy who bails them out. Drop points in December and January and it becomes part of the Salah story whether the club wants it to or not.

Hakimi

Achraf Hakimi messed up his ankle badly in the fall. Morocco called him up anyway, so PSG now has to plan around a question mark. Maybe he plays the tournament. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he comes back limited.

If he’s out, PSG can’t just swap in another right back and run the same patterns. Hakimi is how they get width on that side, how they progress the ball, how they recover when they get caught pushing forward. Different player, different system. That’s not a personnel tweak—it’s a month of adjustment.

Osimhen

Galatasaray paid $86 million to get Victor Osimhen from Napoli. That kind of money tells you everything about how central he is. And now he’s gone to Nigeria for the tournament.

Without Osimhen their attack loses its focal point. They can still keep the ball, but keeping the ball isn’t the same as threatening. He’s the reason defenses have to worry. Without that, they’re a possession team that doesn’t really scare anyone.

Lookman and Mané

Nigeria also takes Ademola Lookman from Atalanta. He’s one of those players who doesn’t fit a tidy job description—he creates chances out of chaos, he separates from defenders in small spaces, he finishes when the structure falls apart. You can’t just tell someone else to do that.

A month without Lookman probably means Atalanta plays tighter, takes fewer risks in transition, sits back a little more when chasing games. Not because they want to, but because they don’t have the player who makes gambling worthwhile.

Al Nassr loses Sadio Mané to Senegal. He’s still got the burst and the directness even if he’s not what he was at Liverpool. In a squad full of names, that profile still matters. Without him the front line has to make riskier choices, and some of those won’t come off.

What January is actually about

AFCON doesn’t just take talent. It takes solutions—the specific players who fix problems when structure breaks down.

The clubs that handle this well will treat it like a tactical problem. Simplify what you’re asking from the replacements. Protect the areas you know you can’t cover the same way. Accept that for a month you’re a different team.

Some clubs will figure that out. Others will watch the table slip while their best players are in Morocco chasing a different trophy.