According to the Angular documentation, the routerLink directive selectors are defined as :
:not(a)[routerLink]
To the best of my understanding, this implies "all elements that are not <a> tags but have the attribute routerLink".
However, the same documentation later showcases examples of routerLink being used with <a> tags, like this one:
<a [routerLink]="['/user/bob']" [queryParams]="{debug: true}" fragment="education">
link to user component
</a>
Do you think there might be an error in the documentation or could there be something I am missing about selectors?