(Egypt- Congo DR) preview: It’s all about Egypt

the road to world cup 2010 starts here, tomorrow’s night the kick-off for our dream world cup campaign will be at Cairo stadium, this historic stadium that witnessed all the highs and lows of Egyptian football and will witness once again the Egyptian team marching to the world cup. Congo DR will be our first hurdle, - consider them lucky or unlucky. as usual, before any big date for the national team, hassan shehata is surrounded by problem from players and from media but i am sure that he ,as usual, will just put all of them in the trash bin and bring glory to egypt again.

first, abu trika is out for two months because of a major injury in hi knee. i don’t need to say how much he is a valuable player in the team and how does shehata’s formation and tactic relies heavily on him. i can’t consider this a blow, at least for now, because we need him later and the teams we are going to play with, with all the respect, aren’t that powerful.

second, mohamed zidan……what a petty!!. zidan has officially joined the club of run-away professionals to join his team mates like mido ,ghaly ….etc. the story is that he came from hamburg to join the team but he presented a report that he is injured which was proved to be a false one after the team’s doctor examined him, so shehata and samir zaher, association’s president decided to suspend him from the national team forever. rumors say that he did sth very very bad during the camp and that’s why he was suspended!!. any way, what was he thinking about??? does he want to play in the world cup directly without any effort????? is he even tired while he didn’t play much in hamburg!!!……shame on u zizou

third, best player in ghana 2008, hosni abd raboh is the victim of his own ignorance of rules governing professional football. originally a strasbourg player playing in ismaily on loan, he signed for ahly and then said no. strasbourg put the case in front of fifa which gave its final decision last week to return abd raboh to strasbourg and by turn to ahly. not knowing where will he play next season, he was totally unfocused and to make it even worse his agent came to him at the camp and stayed with him till early hours of the next morning and hosni missed the morning training session. now, shehata has no choice except to put him on the bench losing another valuable player!!!!

fourth, all of this above took all the credit in the media and the national was the last in their list of interest. only yesterday, they started to remember that their is an Egyptian team getting ready to their first qualifier match. not only that, but they also started attacking shehata on his choices of players and accusing him to be arrogant. what else would u expect from such an unprofessional media (and i know what i am talking about!!).

now the picture isn’t all black, for every player who is missing there are other players waiting for half a chance to prove themselves. this match will see new players shine with the national team and write new history for themselves, hopefully.

usually, players who get such a chance fight for the ball as if they haven’t played before regardless of the importance of the match which is considered an advantage.

now let’s move to the match itself

Congo DR

after last time we played them in can 20006, the team has changed a lot. only lualua and mboto are remaining from the 2006 team. their roster is formed from all European based players. their coach is patrice novo who trained in egypt before and knows a lot about Egyptian football.

all this doesn’t scare em, because most of these professional players play in weak teams , if they were to play, so players from our domestic league are way much better than a team. plus, their mentality as a team isn’t that good. however, lualua panathanikos’ player can be very dangerous.

Egypt

the team has been together for 5 days in a preparation camp in Alexandria and should have developed their chemistry by now and ready to go.

as i said, we are missing abu trika, zidan, ahmed fathy, mohamed shawky, hosni, sayed moawad. so basically there is a shortage in midfield.

hopefully, ghaly and ahmed hassan will be there to keep our midfield in control, in front of them, shikabala will be compensating abu trika and zidan and he has the abilities and skills needed to be more than dangerous on Congo’s defense.

new faces like ahmed mohamady and ahmed samir farag will be taking our wings, both players are young and have the potential for being one of the best players in the team.

defense line is the only one without problems, wael, fathallah and hani said will be there defending el hadary’s goal.

in the attack, there is the deadly couple of amr zaki and emad meteb

probable squad:
…………………………………………el hadary…………………..
..ahmed mohamady…..wael gomaa…..hani said….mahmoud fathallah….ahmed samir farag
……………………………ahmed hassan………hossam ghaly……………
…………………………………………..shikabala……………………..
………………………….amr zaki…………………..emad meteb

one last thing, the 11 players who are going to wear the Egyptian team’s jersey should remember that they are playing for egypt and only egypt so the must win and win and win.

key matchups

shehata vs everybody: again, he will come out victorious again

wael gomaa vs lualua: once stopped him in 2006 and now he will stop him again, very important challenge though as it will decide if we will be under pressure or not

shikabala vs the chance: this is his chance now on a silver plate. zidan and abu trika aren’t there, he should prove that he is a world class player.

amr zaki vs his terrific form: the guy has been on fire lately, so we need him to continue with that and score goals.

match card:

what? world cup 2010 qualifiers
who? egypt - congo dr
when? 8pm (clt)
where? cairo stadium

NB: i am very sorry for being late in posing the preview but i was really busy, exams b2a

ya rab el nasr le masr