FIFA’s ranking and other stuff

As most of you may know, we became 16th in the latest FIFA ranking and 2nd over Africa headed by Cameroon.

Although this FIFA ranking is a joke, we can consider jumping 5 ranks and getting our best ranking since 1993 as a good achievement but there are some questions that need to be answered.

1- We beat Cameroon 2 times in a space of 3 weeks in an official tournament and they are still ahead of us???
2- We won 2 African championships and still we are never first over Africa?
3- Cameroon are didn’t qualify to the last world cup and still they are on top?
4- How in hell do they do this ranking????????

Shehata’s reaction to the rankings were very welcoming as he considered it a great achievement; he also assured that he will do his best so that we can even achieve better rankings.

just don’t be fooled by the rankings!!

In other news, we are going to play a friendly against Kenya in 22nd of January in Cairo; it is also planned that another friendly will be played on February but the opponent is still unidentified yet, we have offers from Portugal, Ghana and guinea.

Away from this subject, I just had a comment on linking Ahly’s and Zamalek’s results with the national team and that if Ahly couldn’t make it on the international stage then the NT won’t but this is just bullshit by the media to create any kind of hype because there is a big difference between them.

First the national team consists of the stars of every club so weak players are nearly non-existent; second, when playing for the national team, players enjoy (hopefully) the support of all fans, have more responsibility and mores stakes so they play more seriously; third, Hassan Shehata isn’t Manuel Jose!!!

I want to remind everyone that our latest achievements on the national team level came after big blows on club level; 2006 cup after Ahly’s failure in world cup and 2008 cup after Ahly’s failure against Etoile Du Sahel in champions league so I guess this gives us a reason to be optimistic.

Finally to end with this issue, our media need to revise itself and become more professional because they always exaggerate during victories and during defeats, they also don’t present an honest and realistic image to events; for example, they gave an impression that Al Ahly is going to win this cup and that they are he strongest while reality was far from that and the same goes with the national team.

Bits and pieces

-Zidan was chosen in the team of the week of the Bundesliga, he is having the winter vacation so no action for him soon.

-according to Steve Bruce, Amr Zaki isn’t going anywhere till the end of the season so he will continue with Wigan till the end of the contract; there were reports that linked him to Chelsea but it seems that it was just a rumor.

-Ahmed El Mohammadi transfer to Blackburn failed after they sacked Paul Ince after a series of bad results and because they don’t have enough cash to fund the deal.

-reports say that Ghaly maybe a part of a 3 players swap deal between Tottenham and Middlesbrough in return for Boro’s Stewart downing, let’s wait and see what happens!!

Just for gags:

Q: why is Al Ahly the most national and important club in Egypt?

A: because when they win, a large percentage of Egyptian people are happy and when they lose the remaining percentage is happy!!

that’s all folks