Ahly stumbles and gets out with a draw with Ismaily

yesterday, it was the second biggest match in egyptian footbal between ahly and ismaily. the match ended 1-1. both omar gamal and flavio scored for ismaily and ahly resectively.

match background

this is the bigest rivalry in egyptian football even bitter than ahly-zamalek, both fans hate each other and this hatred is usually reflected on the players in the field. there match is always tensioned full of action and quiet some great football. reasons for this hatred are mainly that ahly always buys ismaily stars from the “backdoors” without fans consent according to ismaily fans. also there is a hisorical reason; ismaily fans say that ahly refused to recieve their team back in 1967 after the war while zamalek hosted them so you get the picture!!.

the match

as usual you could feel the tension in the field with a lot of fans coming from ismailia city to support their team, chants began to echo around the military academy stadium. in numbers, the match wasn’t that important, ahly are 4 points away from the title while ismaily is fighting along with zamalek and el gaish for second place. ahly entered the match missing its 2 main goal keepers ( el hadary for obvious reasons and amir abd el hamid for injury) so it was a very critical situation as they played with their 3rd goal keeper who is only 20 years old. on the other side ismaily missed its captain homos and motasem salem a key defender.

first half

the first half started with pressure from ismaily who were passing the ball around trying to find gaps, they were also seeking any chance especially hosni abd raboh to fire one of his shots. ahly holded on back in defence and made some counter attacks. at the 36 minutes a deflected ball from the defenses was gathere and put in a cross to find omar gamal’s head and into the net.now, flares beagn to light up and insults became more intense. at the last minute, the refree whistled for a penalty for ahly but shady mohamed put it in the hands of mohamed sobhy (ismaily’s goal keeper).

second half

ahly players retrained themselves and restored the grip over the match. abu trika was now on the field so they got a slight control over midfield; however, ismaily had dangerous chances from counter attacks. 11 minutes before the end flavio used a cross from gilberto to equalize for ahly.

now ahly is 3 points away from the title and ismaily lost the second place for zamalek who won 2-1 against ghazl el mahala, both are waitnig for el gaish’s match today.

here is all the the action from the match