Time Fillers: Confederations Cup 1999

Until we know how the national team schedule will look like after the Ahly’s surprise crash out of the champions league and moving to the confederation cup consequently and until we know whether the confederations cup is going to be played or not because of swine flu and until I finish my exams here is another time filler.

Before starting, I think we should go over the problems that came up and are undermining the success of our preparation camp in Oman for the game against Algeria and the confederations cup; the thing is that after Ahly moved to the confederation cup they will have to play the return leg on 29th or 30th of may, the same date of our friendly against Oman so either Ahly leave his international players or we would play without them which will reduce from the usefulness of the game in restoring the lost harmony between players ahead of a very crucial game in our world cup qualification adventure !!!

Now back to our main issue.

Today we remember our only and lonely participation in the confederations cup in Mexico 1999 as the champions of Africa while we are getting ready for our second one next month.

Coached by the general Mahmoud El Gohary, we had a great team back then comprising the likes of Hossam Hassan, Ibrahim Hassan, Hazem Emam, Hady Khashaba, Abdel Satar Sabry, Yasser Ryan, Hany Ramzy, Nader El Sayed, Yasser Radwan, Mohamed Omara……..etc

Group: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Bolivia

Our first match was against Bolivia, runners up of 1997 copa America, and ended in a 2-2 draw scored by Abdel Satar Sabry and Yasser Radwan – I miss those players – the result was good and gave n optimistic picture of what to come next.

Our second match was against Mexico, the hosts, in front of their fans in the giant Azteca stadium and we earned a point after another 2-2 draw scored by Ahmed Hassan and Samir Kamouna; the result was a great achievement especially as it was our first international appearance since 1990 world cup.

Here are the goals

Then it was the shock.

Having achieved these good results, our game with Saudi Arabia was supposed to be a piece of cake especially as they were trashed by Mexico 5-1 earlier; however, we lost 5-1 due to over confidence and bad refereeing decisions that cost us 3 players after they were shown three red cards unfairly.

Here are the highlights of the game

The result was a great shock to the Egyptian fans as they waited for the 3 points and qualification to the semi-final; instead, Saudi Arabia qualified. El Gohary was fired after the championship.

After that we entered an endless spiral of failure on the continental level until Hassan Shehata came and we won the 2006 and 2008 African tiles and here we are now, waiting for our biggest challenge ever on the international level during the upcoming confederations cup with Brazil, Italy and USA in our group.

Let’s hope we have learned from the lessons of the past and we achieve better results this time.