Last Thursday I watched Ahly take on Enppi in the Egyptian Premier League. Ahly managed to scrape a 2-1 win putting them 6 points clear at the top from second placed Zamalek with a game in hand. Ahly played extremely poorly and if not for a number of refereeing errors would have easily lost the match. Enppi scored 2 goals which were incorrectly disallowed for offside, but more on that later. The performance in itself was horrendous.
Not for the first time this season and especially in the second round of the competition Ahly has played aimlessly and extremely poorly. Hossam El Badry is yet to realize his starting eleven (or more accurately 13). The coach has changed around players and has rarely started with the same players for two games back to back. Some coaches do this to rest players and for squad rotation (Rafa Benitez comes to mind) but when you are leading the league and putting on OK performances why the confusion? Tactically we seem lacking too but this is not what I want to talk about today. I was always a bit critical of Badry, but was behind him as a new coach and for leading the team to top the league. After Thursday's game I have lost all respect for this man and I want to see him sacked sooner rather than later regardless of winning or losing the league! I have never seen watching football (and I watch my fair share of game:D) a manager react the way Badry did towards his players on every mistake or missed opportunity. The coach was swearing and shouting and waving his arms all through the game in disgust. The way he reacted after conceding the first goal was shocking to me. Slurring out words of disgust and looks of contempt. He even decided to swear at one of his strikers after missing a chance!! What kind of message does this send to the team and the fans? For starters he is the one who selected and trained these players. he has put them in the starting eleven. The way they play is first and foremost his responsibility and if it happens that certain individuals play poorly that's what you have the changing room for! Give them the hairdryer treatment in private. Players are human beings, if you insult them in public how the hell do you expect them to play for you?? Or was he just putting on a show for us viewers and off course his bosses too? Was he trying to tell us that this was not his fault by showing us that he wasn't OK with the performance? No matter what his reasons were for doing this , it is unacceptable. Being and Ahly fan all my life I take offense to what Hossam El Badry did. When you verbally insult your player you are actually insulting every fan and insulting the club itself! What he did during the game is just as equivalent as throwing your teams shirt on the floor after being substituted, remember what the board did to Hossam Hassan when he did this?
The fans started cheering to lift up the team after conceding the first goal against Enppi, they could see it was a horrendous defensive mistake yet they didn't care they got behind their team. What did the coach do? he abused his players. If Ahly management had some guts this man should be sacked out of respect for the players and the fans a like.
Refereeing has been a huge issue in Egypt the past couple of weeks or so. Things boiled over after the Ahly/Enppi game when the latter had 2 good goals disallowed. The thing is the referees are indeed making a lot of mistakes, but frankly this has been going on for years and years in Egypt. Overall though I think things have improved, they might be having more impact on games because they are making decisions. They are getting more involved, penalties, red cards and so on. Years back they usually did nothing, they would not dare give penalties in crucial matches or red cards, they wanted everything to just go smoothly. I remember Gamal El Ghandour (arguably Egypt's best ever referee) when he used to be in charge of Ahly/Zamalek derby games they always finished 0-0. He would blow for every single contact and their was never ever controversy because he never let the game flow to start with. One thing that has never changed for ages is that referees continue to favor both Ahly and Zamalek against lesser opposition. Alaa Sadek pointed this out and he was dead on. I would go a bit more and say that even in other games they tend to favor the more powerful club, this is unacceptable! Moreover they are the kind of referees who see how the game is going and base decisions on that, something must be done about this!
What is insane though is that the Zamalek board have the audacity to publish a formal letter on their official website saying that Egyptian referees favor Ahly and want to give them the league. Are they blind or do they just want to stir up feelings of injustice. I think Mamdouh Abass and co know very well that winning the league this season would be a miracle, even with Badry coaching Ahly, and they thought they might as well prepare excuses. Frankly they are either blind or clueless to attempt such an argument. I urge Zamalek fans not to fall for this hoax. Refereeing in Egypt favors both Ahly and Zamalek. Does everyone here have that short of a memory? A clear offside versus Arab Contractors at the end of the game gave Zamalek 3 points, no? Ismaily scored a clear goal against Zamalek that was given as a foul for no reason what so ever! The list goes on. Yeah the Zamalek board wanted to replay or worse get 3 points over Harass Al Hodod when they were beaten fair and square, over a technical error that had nothing to do with Harass. If anyone has a right to feel aggrieved it's teams like Ismaily, Enppi, Petrojet who have an actual chance to compete for the title if refs were fair. Also teams struggling for survival who lost points due to such bias. Wake up and smell the roses!
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