Time fillers: flashback on an interview with the general

Since there is no new happenings with our national team so there is almost nothing to write about, I thought it will be interesting to search back in our world cup qualifiers archive and revive back some of our memories here as time filler until something new occurs.

As I said, while searching in our history I found this very interesting interview that “the general” Mahmoud El Gohary gave to Al Ahram news paper after the end of world cup 2002 qualifying campaign.

Background

the Egyptian team failed to qualify from his group (Senegal, morocco, Algeria and Namibia) to the world cup held in Korea and Japan in 2002 after a draw with Algeria in Algeria 1-1 while we needed a win to qualify and at the same time Algeria lost any hope of qualifying; after Mido scored our goal first, Algerian fans started to throw everything their hands reached from chairs to flares and even as one player said “urine bags” (although I don’t believe this), the game was stopped for more than 15 minutes and the referee became intimidated and the game went in Algeria’s direction afterwards and they scored a goal ending the game in a 1-1 draw giving Senegal their ticket to the world cup; the weird and interesting note is that Algerian players celebrated as if they were the ones who qualified!!!!!!!

The Egyptian football association presented a complaint about the incidents that accompanied the game to the FIFA hoping that the game could be replayed as it happened with us before (I will discuss the incident later in a separate post); eventually the referee was suspended and the Algerian federation was fined but nothing else happened and Senegal qualified.

This interview was made with El Gohary who was the team’s coach by then while waiting for the FIFA’s ruling. In an atmosphere of frustration, El Gohary linked his stay with the team to play at the African cup of nations in Mali with the ruling.

The interview

-” I wish from all my heart that the game would be replayed because we have been victims of huge injustice when we played in an atmosphere, the least thing we can describe it with is un-sportsmanship; after the 13th minute in the second half, the game as turned into a second one different from the one we were playing.”

-”we were the best team in the group technically but the difficulties we faced were extraordinary; for example, we had a very bizarre draw that put us in a very difficult group, then there was the order of matches which made Senegal play its last away match with Namibia after it lost any hope of qualifying and didn’t call their professionals,”

-” if we had played our first game against Namibia with its full force in Cairo and the away match at the end we would have achieved better results like what has happened with Senegal.”

-”I am not making excuses; however, our best players wasted more than 22 real scoring chances during the 8 matches we played like what happened twice during the last match with Algeria.”

-”I wish that when we analyze one of the most important eras in the Egyptian football history we must consider some technical observations; for example, all the games in which we lost points by drawing with Senegal in Dakar or Namibia in Namibia or even morocco in Cairo, were played with the full squad which rules out the accusations that says that I excluded them from the team deliberately and any player we lost was a things out of our control due to injuries or suspensions.”

-”these were some of the inner problems that I didn’t wish to have at this moment; a side from anything, the most important thing now is that we should overcome our personal conflicts and consider the welfare of the national team and its success because success payback at all the elements of Egyptian football from management, technical staffs, players and fans like what happened after world cup 1990 and African cup 1998.”

-on the personal level, I feel very sad because all the failures that happened under my reign were out of my hands; for example, the notorious stone incident in world cup 1994 qualifications and the huge loss to Saudi Arabia 5-1 in the confederations cup 1999 in a game where 3 players from the team were shown a red card which rarely happens in a football match then came the current qualifiers in which had to face bad refereeing in our match against morocco in Rabat and the recent incidents in Algeria which affected the end result in both matches.”

-”foreign reports that hailed the Egyptian team and considered him the most worthy team to qualify to the world cup as well as condemning the unexplained actions of Algerian fans is a big relief to me within the atmosphere of sadness and depression.”

-” I have full confidence that we will beat Algeria 3-0 if the game was replayed under normal conditions if we recharged the players; this is the only hope we are surviving on and I can’t imagine any other scenarios after the obvious injustice that occurred to my team.”

That was the man’s words after the campaign reached its end, I will leave you to judge things but I can assure the general that we will give the Algerian team their payback both in Cairo and Algeria ISA.

For those of you who don’t know Mahmoud El Gohary, watch this video

Not only he was called the general, he was the first coach to have his own chant in the stands: GOHARYYYYYYY GOHRAYYYYYYY OOOO OOOO