Dig your way through

i have a message to the Egyptian team that flew to Ghana today: “dreams aren’t enough, what we need is love,dedication,respect and hard work”. we must dig our way through the African jungle or should i call it “Jurassic park”. we are stuck just like the lady in the picture, except that the shovel will be our feet and the ice will be African talented, skilled and powerful players and teams and we will have our shadow to get the ice out of our way. a practical example is the Egyptian handball team which gave an example to follow, they were crowned African champions after a great match against Tunisia. they fought for it and earned it so what will football do?

this tournament will be hard for all teams. the fact that most of them are powerful, all of them are ambitious will make it even harder and entertaining.today, the 23 Egyptian fighter flied to Ghana, and yes i am not exaggerating when i say fighter , because it will take more than good play, skills and talent to win this tournament, who wants to win must fight for it. the Egyptian team carries the dreams of 75 million Egyptian of maintaining their champion status.

road to the cup
egypt will play its first match against Cameroon. very big match..huh?. on the paper Cameroon is way better than egypt: its players play in better clubs, they are famous and they enjoy great physical power compared to their Egyptian counter parts, but don’t forget their average age, they are old. however, egypt has more skillful players and they are more used to each other because they know and play with each other a lot.to predict the result of this match is a very difficult task but i think that if egypt comes out with a draw it will be great.

the second match will be with Zambia, i really don’t know much about Zambia but their results in friendly matches was kind of reasonable: 2/1 and 0/1 with Tunisia and 2/1 with morocco. this match will be crucial for egypt, and it must win the 3 points if it want to go far in the tournament.

final group match will be the derby of the nile, egypt-Sudan. well, the results of the matches between the two teams throughout history leans toward egypt greatly.Sudan has improved a lot in the past year and it will be a hard to win match but i think egypt can get a 1/0 or 2/0 win from Sudan.

round 8:
egypt will play with either the second or first of group D which will probably be Tunisia or Senegal. if egypt can get through this they will be more close to their aim. i can’t go after this stage because this is an unpredictable area.
all in all, a reasonable target for egypt in Ghana is to be there in the semi-final.

status
last Sunday, egypt played against Angola and equalized 3/3 in an entertaining and very useful match for the Egyptian team. the match gave us a nearly clear picture of the Egyptian team.
biggest fears:
it is the defense. from the beginning of the preparation camp and hassan shehata has expressed his fears from the defense line and he worked on it very much. the problem is that the number of available players in this position is very limited; beside, they aren’t in their complete form.however, from what i saw in Angola’s match, the defense improved so much. wael gomaa and Mahmoud fathallah did co-operate well, but there is still some errors especially from balls coming from both flanks and crosses. but with Ibrahim said joining the team we would be more relieved although he is coming from an injury!!!
points of power
Egypt’s power is in its attack. egypt has very talented strikers participating in this tournament. zidan, emad moteb,amr zaki, Mohamed fadl are all great individuals who play in harmony together except for zidan who needs to play more with team and not depend 100% on his skills. the practical evidence was in Angola’s match, egypt scored 3 beautiful goals all by emad moteb, but he only made the final touch. egypt showed a great ability in building up attacks and knew how to reach the opponent’s net.

what will egypt miss?
1-the fans, they were one of the major reasons behind 2006 triumph and egypt will miss them a lot.
2-mido, a great player and a talented striker and a feared name will not be there.
3-media support, the Egyptian team went to Ghana with half of the support it received in 2006

latest news
*Ahmed hassan was chosen the second best player in Belgium and will join the team in Ghana on Saturday. Ahmed will miss the first match against Cameroon due to a suspension from caf.
*amr zaki joined the team after an injury in his head that took place in Mali’s friendly match.

now let’s enjoy this song