Egypt 4 – Trinidad & Tobago 1: A night to remember!!

Watching the opening ceremony and the game on television is something and living the real thing inside the stadium was a totally different thing; that was one of the best football experiences I ever had starting from the stadium, the ceremony, the game, the fans…basically everything was fascinating.

The stadium

The moment you leave Cairo – Alexandria high way to the entrance of Borg El Arab city, you notice the stadium from far; an archeological piece of art that I consider a qualitative shift in the standard of Egyptian stadiums. Once you approach the stadium more, your fascination increases as you get to see more details of its design. You enter the stands easily through the numerous gates, everything is clean and organized, signs and labels are everywhere to guide the fans. Inside, the seats are good and allow for more enjoyment with a good view to the whole field, the stand above the main tribune gives a scary echo to the cheers, Restaurants and shops are spread all over the stadium for more fun….it is quiet an interesting and entertaining experience to go watch a match there. I strongly demand that the senior national team play some friendly or even official matches there.

The ceremony

Despite the many sporting events we hosted, this is arguably the best ceremony we ever made; for the first time we use laser screens and lighting techniques not to mention the fireworks in such a comprehensive way.

The music went in harmony with scenes demonstrating the various cultures and football history of the participating countries.

Amr Mostafa on the other hand, excelled with his two songs and really entertained the fans who interacted with him wonderfully; the only shortcoming I should say is that there was no enough light for the dancers especially for TV viewers unlike fans in the stadium, but they weren’t much anyway and their role wasn’t central.

The game

It was a pretty much entertaining game aside from the shaky and nervous start from both teams due to the fans pressure. Players from both sides showed a high level of skill raising the competitiveness in the game; however, the Egyptians managed with the help of the fans’ support to snatch the first three points.

While Egypt depended on its sides and Afroto’s dribbling skills to break the heavy Trinidad defense, the guests used short passing to control the tempo of the game and put the home team under pressure.

In the first half, the guests seemed to control the game before Egypt started to control the ball and create and waste chances before they score through Afroto; following the goal, the players relaxed, as usual, and allowed the Soca Warriors to equalize and enter the second half with high morals.

In the second half, Egypt managed to score the second and third goals from counter attacks and deflected balls only to find the players relaxed again; Trinidad players started to form a real threat to our defense and almost scored two goals but they were unlucky to hit the post twice.

A lot of chances were missed and embarrassing defensive mistakes were committed on both sides due to lack of experience; the result would have changed a lot if half of the wasted chances were scored, it would have been 6-3 or something.

The team

Our players showed that they have great potentials, they only need to cope with playing under pressure in front of huge fans, the chemistry between them was good; however, serious attention must be directed toward defensive errors and efficiency in front of the goal.

From the players, Afroto and Hossam Arafat were the most eye-catching, also Ali Lotfi showed he would be a great goalkeeper in the future; Talaat, on the other hand, failed to convince me, he seems to have all media and fans’ attention but he failed to meet those expectations and was selfish in many balls, maybe he should be more modest or we are only watching the next Mido.

The fans

The real star of the day; Mohamed Talaat statement said it all.

“We only expected our families to attend,” he said

To everyone’s surprise, the stadium was full with 80 thousand fans and other thousands were waiting outside; they added a special atmosphere to the ceremony with their cheers and provided continuous support for our players and put the pressure on the opponents who were for the first time playing in front of this number of fans.

Huge Thanks to Alexandria for this big day

Now we need to keep focused and avoid our mistake as we take Paraguay in Cairo next week.

Some photos from the game