As much as the FIFA World Cup is about celebrating the highest level of skill and brilliant goals it also serves to describe the human spirit and at times its a case of life imitating art.
Nowhere does this ring more true than in the story of Egyptian football having ascended to the top coming up short and falling from grace, then rising from the depths of ruin to take their place amongst the world's best punctuating the potential they'd showed almost a decade ago.
When it comes to football on the African continent very few country's can dispute the achievements of Egyptian football. Having dominated African football at club level with 35 trophies in all forms of CAF competitions, Egypt's dominance was finally translated into continental success with the national side as they dominated the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) in the latter half of the previous decade.
From 2006-2010 Egypt won successive Afcon titles marking the first time any country has won the tournament three times in a row. During that winning run the Egyptians completed a run of 18 matches undefeated over the three tournaments and bigger things looked to be on the horizon for the continent's greatest side.
Things started to look up for Egypt as they entered the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup giving a good account of themselves as they ran former World champions Brazil very close in an exciting 4-3 defeat.
The Phoroahs even had the beating of defending world champions Italy in a 1-0 win, but exited the competition after a 3-0 loss against the USA.
With the first ever world cup on the African continent on the horizon, Egypt looked to be set to announce themselves back on the world stage having last made an appearance at the World Cup back in 1990.
Unfortunately, that's as good it would get for the seven-time African champions as they lost out on a spot in South Africa after a play-off as North African rivals Algeria edged them 1-0 over two legs.
Having stopped just short of making a splash on a global scale, an unfortunate series of events outside of their control saw the record setting champions miss out on three consecutive AFCON finals.
Political instability and upheaval that came with the Arab Spring that swept across the Middle East and North Africa made life difficult for an Egypt team with a large contingent of home based players.
Egypt finished bottom of a qualifying group they would be expected to win as it featured minnows Sierra Leone and struggling South Africa. The defending champions missed out on the Afcon in 2012.
The Egyptian Premier league was suspended for more than two months in 2012 was later cancelled and replaced with a tournament after stadium violence in Port Said erupted leaving 75 people deceased and 500 others injured marked one of the darkest passages in the nation's history on both a footballing as well as a social context.
Egypt would go on to miss the Afcon finals in 2013 and the tournament thereafter. Seemingly in the space of a few years the nation which had conquered continental football in successive campaigns had been reduced to outsiders looking in as the rest of the continent left them behind.
By the time qualifications for the Brazil World Cup came around things started to look good as the former African champions breezed through the second round of qualifiers winning all of six of their games, but Egypt's battle with adversity wasn't over yet.
In a play-off which was expected to be tough affair Egypt were drawn against Ghana and by the time the final whistle was blown Egyptian dreams of a place in the 2014 World Cup were crushed.
Ghana hammered Egypt 6-1 in Kumasi and an Egypt win in the return leg proved only to be a formality as the Black Stars came away with a 7-3 aggregate win and a place in Brazil.
Things have finally started looking up for Egypt recently with their reintroduction back onto the world scene with their first appearance at a World Cup finals for the first time in 28 years which coincidenced with their return to the Afcon the previous year where they finished as the runners-up to Cameroon.
In Russia they will carry with them the hopes of a nation that has had to overcome much in a short space of time and due to how deeply woven football is into the inner fabric of Egypt as a country, one can only hope to see them go as far as they can and in the process write the next chapter in what has been one of the great storylines in the FIFA World Cup's history.
No comments:
Post a Comment