The past two days were very sad for me. It wasn't your straight forward sad, and yes I'm talking about football. For years now Football games have had the ability to lift and sink my mood, just ask my wife:)
Yesterday I saw an Egyptian side (who had earlier crushed the dreams of millions by failing to qualify to the World Cup from the easiest group in the continent) take on a star studded Nigerian side. Nigeria is not that of old and the golden team of Amokachi, Yakini and Finidi seems a distant memory. However, they are back to the world cup after being seemingly dead and buried in the qualification (albeit Tunisia gifting them qualification). Nigeria by all means were a side on the up and having the likes of Yakubu (Everton), Obasi (Hoffenhiem), Yobo (Everton), Mikel (Chelsea) in their squad it would seem they were favorites against Egypt.
After our disappointing performance all through qualification I seriously wanted to get rid of Hassan Shehata and what better way to do it than by being knocked out of the first round in CAN 2010. I was going to support every single team playing against Egypt, cause frankly I don't bloody care about winning another African Cup, I was looking for the future and I don't think Shehata will ever get us there. As I sat down to watch the game I thought GO Egypt! I am far too fond of many of the Egyptian players not least of which are Meteb, Zidan and Ahmed Hassan to support Nigeria and frankly on their day Egypt's most gifted generation can beat anyone. I didn't expect this however.
Egypt put up a scintillating display lead by the brilliant Ahmed Hassan. He is a true model professional that all players in Egypt could learn from. He is playing his 8th African Cup having won three already in 98, 06, and 08. From a goal down early on we hit back by goals from Meteb, Hassan and Geddo (no I didn't make him up). Egypt dominated the Super Eagles especially in the second half and if we had continued to play for 2 days Nigeria would not have scored. Everything was right yesterday. It was the first time in a tournament under Shehata that we came back from a goal down to win (his second time in all competitions, first was against DR Congo in Cairo, in first phase of qualifications). We played better in the second half than the first, we were more physically fit than the Nigerians, we didn't score any penalties and as for the deflection, I say you make your own luck when it comes to scoring goals. Shehata did everything right, off course his clueless Nigerian counterpart helped, but still Egypt were convincing. His team showed experience and high morals and again played for him and for each other. After seeing the game I'm not sue if we will win the cup but I think we can easily got to the semis. A day earlier I had seen Malawi rip Algeria to shreds and after Egypts result I was shocked and saddened. How the hell didn't we reach the world cup?
Watching this cup I still can't believe we are not going to South Africa. We look much better than a lot of the teams going after the first round of games. I know this is not something to go by as I recall Cameroon in 1990 getting knocked out of the first round in the competition then going on to take the world by storm in Italia 90. However, if you look at the fact that we have been dominating the competition for 4 years now and that a lot of the big teams are very eager to win this years competition, none more so than Cote D'Ivoire. The current generation of Elephants have never won the African Cup and can't wait to do so. In the two previous editions their dreams have shattered after coming up against one team, Egypt. Why didn't we qualify then?
Honestly I have no idea why we could not ease through qualification from an easy group but I have some ideas that may have contributed. For starters I think how the group looked on paper and the fact we were African Champs put the fans, the players and the coaching staff at ease. They were heading for a rude awakening after the 1-1 draw with Zambia in Cairo. Sadly no one saw the warning bells and we managed to shift momentum towards Algeria after slumping to a 3-1 defeat there. Egypt rallied up till the first game in Cairo. I talked about the footballing reasons for not qualifying (The Failure)Some other factors came into play leading up to the first game and the decider in Sudan that contributed to our failure.
The media was crazy. They proceeded to portray Algeria as the devil and this for me added extra pressure on the players. Playing against an enemy is very different from playing against an opponent. You won't take risks and will play it safe , after all you are defending your countries honor and not competing in a sport. The anger also takes up some of your energy and you get more lapses in concentration. Where the hell did the spirit of sport disappear to? It seemed we were in a war and not a football game. After the first game people and the media celebrated as if we had already qualified, there was one more game left.
The choice of venue for the final game from the Egyptian Federation and Hassan Shehata was idiotic. We picked Sudan. It is of common knowledge that pitches in Sudan are very poor and that rarely have Egyptians teams gone there and won. The Egypt team is very skilled and dominate opposition by using a slick passing game. We need a good pitch, yet we chose a really poor one. We refused to pick Libya cause they would support Algeria although there are around 1.5million Egyptians living there? We did not pick South Africa although they have great pitches and we had already played there months before. Most of the fans that went there were not true footballing fans and a lot of politicians and artists decided to go in order to boost their own self image. The atmosphere when it came to Egypt was bleak. We will never qualify to a world cup unless we stop turning sport into war and instead of talking about a football game we blamed the loss on events after the game?
Last but not least was the caliber of coaching. Yes I don't like Shehata and at the end of the day you can be unlucky at one game were it all matters. Just ask Guus Hiddink, one of the most brilliant coaches in the world did not qualify to the world cup with Russia. However, before you start going on about how this is true and how it could happen to anyone think a bit. Egypt to Africa is not what Russia is to Europe. Egypt is like Spain or Germany in Europe. We are the "it" team in the continent. Shehata had luck on him for most games in qualification but not when it most mattered. Shehata's results speak for themselves he has done very good. But he has failed twice when it really mattered. First was in 2005 when he came on as coach for the first time mid qualification and we had to beat Cote D'Ivoire away to have any chance of going to the world cup. He lost that game but that wasn't the problem. He never tried to win, he was scared and couldn't or wouldn't turn around the game. Maybe he was inexperienced then but the second time he wasn't. He has failed when he has had to up his game to the next level. He has proven time and again that he can't read the big games and can't take control of matches if his players are not in top form. He can't turn things around. Against Nigeria the stakes were not high, you have 3 strikes so the pressure is lower. In the two African Cups we were never favorites and the expectations were low. When we have high expectations and the pressure is on us and not on the opposition we fail. This is also a problem with the players, it it not only the coaches fault but it is his job to help them cope. He has had it easy as half of his players already had the know how of dealing with pressure. Jose's Ahly were favorites for five years in every game they played locally and in Africa. Most of the time we delivered.
I hope that in my life time I get to see Egypt once again in the World Cup. I'm not very optimistic though as the way we go about it is not encouraging. We need a highly technical coach . Shehata in all honestly has done good but we need someone to take us to the next level. This person should be backed up by a system that views football as a sport and not as a holy calling. A system that analyzes why we fail and doe not congratulate failure. We also need more professional players that deal with pressure day in and day out. There should be some sort of law that allows players to go abroad and learn. The golden team of Egypt has not reached the world cup, may the next golden team take us there!
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