(Congo DR – Egypt) preview: D-Day…….early? (updated)

The situation is as follows, we have a very crucial away match in our qualifiers campaign, we lost the last friendly against Sudan with a very humiliating defeat 4-0, with this result all guns are aimed at Hassan Shehata and the players so the pressure is at its highest, our opponent is ready and eager to destroy us at their home soil….last but not least we are fasting!!!!!!

We win, we qualify we lose we say goodbye

To start with, many factors have piled up against us for this match this sunday; many of them were made by us. The latest defeat against Sudan sparked fear and lack of confidence in the team, especially Hassan Shehata. Suddenly everybody started to doubt the man’s ability. Surely there were mistakes in this match but come on! It is only a friendly.

Hopefully, the lesson was learned and maybe we needed a result like this to return to the right mentality of respecting the opponent and giving our best whoever the opponent is.

Since it is our fate to play football in Africa we have to pay the price by playing in countries that can’t afford to have illuminated stadiums so we are playing at noon and guess what the match is in Ramadan and we are fasting.

I know many of the players will fast but this is unfair and Congo shouldn’t have been so opportunists and play at night. Isn’t it enough that we have to endure the extremely hot weather and the humidity?

Moreover, we will be playing in a hostile atmosphere in front of 80 thousand exited and charged fans at the stadium of martyrs, so let’s just hope we don’t become martyrs ourselves.

The match

Enough with the atmosphere and less start with football.

Definitely Hassan Shehata will have to abandon this 4-4-2 formation and return to his mind by playing with a sweeper again because we just can’t play except like that.

One reason we don’t have to worry is because we have the next big thing in world football and the EPL top scorer up till now, I mean amr zaki

beside him will be mido which makes us very dangerous if both en are in top form and most important have the desire to score.

In the midfield we will miss Mohamed shawky with great form recently but he will be replaced with Mohamed homos an extra talented layer who didn’t receive enough media attention simply because he doesn’t play in ahly or zamalek. With him will be hosni abd araboh and abo trika who if in their form we will own this match.

In the wings, ahmed samir farag will replace sayed moawad (sigh!) so finally we are playing with 11 players; while on the right side there will be mainly ahmed el mohamady or ahmed hassan.

In defense, the trio hani said, mahmoud fathallah and wael gomaa will be there enjoying a great deal of chemistry between them; however, they need to forget Sudan’s match.

Between the two post, essam el hadary proved that he is irreplaceable, at least we saw what happens when he isn’t there!!!

The opponent

Congo’s team proved that they are good stuff and can be danger; however, there are two key players, lua lua and nonda who if are stopped the whole team loses 60% of its power.

One of my biggest fears is biased refereeing which we are used to in Africa.

Possible line – up:

…………………………………el hadary…………………….
El mohamady……wael gomaa…hani said,,,,fathallah….ahmed samir farag
…………………..homos (ahmed hassan)…hosni abd raboh….
……………………………abu trika………………….
………………amr zaki………………mido………….

Prediction: 1-0 for us, amr zaki

masr masr masr masr ………shaga3 masr

update: lua lua, congo’s star is injured and will not feature in the game, great news for us!!