What does our winning for the 2nd time in a row tell us? It tells us that when there is strong leadership, clear mission, planned milestones & evaluation, quality time of training and development, and above all faith & team work, Egyptians win & it is very hard to stop them.... and when there is no vision, no plans, corruption (i before we), time wasting, and no team work, Egyptians lose everything & beating them is a piece of cake.
Football is not the issue, being Egyptians is!
Mohaly
MABROUK :))) we 3o2bal el ta3leem, wel se7a, wel eskan, wekl moror, wel deyon, wel .... etc.
i don't know why i feel so happy that time , because for the team work the players did or maybe coz its the 6th time
ReplyDeletebut i don't think the main reason is any of that , the main reason is that success made us dream , hope
hope to somehow succeed in our lives whether professional or personal as that team did , by the same way they managed to silently and passionately do and achieve what all others doubt and didn't believe in
either coz they don't want them to succeed , or just lost hope in a world where losing hope and "kabar dema3'k" is the only seen solution most follow
so thanks for the players , not only for making us happy , making us the kings of football africa , uniting the hearts of millions in egypt and outside egypt to support egypt , astonishing the world and reminding them that there is a nation can do a lot called egypt but more for what they made us restore again
hope to make what we want if we believe in and work hard for
Thank God we won the cup! I never imagined how much this would affect me! It boosted my self-confidence, as an Egyptian, and made me believe (again) in my abilities to do something to help my country. We, as Egyptians, seem to have no self-confidence. For some reason we seem to believe that “the other” is always better than us…
ReplyDeleteThe players in the Egyptian national team managed to bring happiness to the entire Egyptian population and boost their ego…I hope that after the party is over the media does not slaughter this beautiful spirit.
Aboutrika, Egypt's crown prince
ReplyDeleteEgypt's second consecutive African title should come as no surprise. Hassan Shehata's side have been far-and-away the most complete side on the continent over the last two years. And just to underline their regional superiority, the Pharaohs also boast some of Africa's most talented players, chief among them their 29-year-old playmaker Mohamed Aboutrika.
That such an exceptionally talented player continues to ply his artful trade in the Egyptian league remains a mystery to many, and in the wake of another flawless performance in Sunday's final in Accra that mystery is set to deepen. The heartbeat of the North African side, Aboutrika was simply irrepressible as he spurred his country to victory.
"It's a wonderful feeling to win this Cup twice in a row," said the man himself after the final whistle had blown. "It feels even better to win it away from home. We already had an excellent team in 2006, but since then we've had some very talented players come into the squad and they have helped give us a lot more experience. We've also been working together for a long time with the same coach, and in a way my team-mates in the national side have become my second family."
The king of the Pharaohs was in no mood to be denied, however, and duly delivered the decisive blow with just 13 minutes left. Following an Egyptian counter-attack down the left, Mohamed Zidan wrestled the ball from Rigobert Song and delivered a pass into the path of the unmarked Aboutrika, who, timing his run into the box to perfection, slotted the ball past the exposed Kameni.
Scoring for my country is even more important than scoring for my club," commented the match-winner. "When I saw the ball hit the back of the net I knew I would be making the whole country happy, and that's something I'm very proud of."
Egypt’s football triumph
ReplyDeleteBy Tarek Osman,
Created 2008-02-13 16:09
Mohamed Aboutrika is an Egyptian man in his 20s. He resembles millions of others who can be seen in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria or any of the country’s cities: a slim, dark figure whose average appearance carries perhaps a hint of grief. But he is, suddenly, not so average: he happens to be the man who scored the only goal – and thus the winning goal – of the final [1] of the African Nations Cup on 10 February 2008 in Accra, Ghana. In a decisive right-foot shot following a mix-up in the Cameroon defense thirteen minutes from the end of the match, Mohamed Aboutrika made Egypt champions of Africa for a record sixth time.
The victory was thrilling in its own, sporting terms. It was worthy of mention even on broadcasting channels outside the African continent or the Arab world which routinely show little interest in these regions, let alone their football contests. But where Egypt [2] itself is concerned, it has in five ways a significance that goes beyond sport itself.
The ingredients of magic
First, it is a proof, first and foremost to Egyptians, that they are not hapless, helpless people disconnected from the culture - and feel - of winning: any winning [3]. In this it resembles the comeback match of an ageing boxer who has been on a losing streak, and whose first knockout in a long time both reminds him of a lost sense of accomplishment and conveys a foretaste of the possible. Egyptians long without real national achievements lament the days since their country was a beacon of progressive thinking, development and advance in the Arab world and Africa; and grieve for the experience of later generations. There is a sense of nakedness in the Egyptian psyche: stripped of the glorious past [4], left with the desolate present. A competitive success [5] - by a team known, with pregnant symbolism, as the Pharaohs - drives a current of hope in souls badly in need of it.
Second, the victory is an example of the potential of ordinary Egyptians – like Mohamed Aboutrika, now being described as the “magician of African football”- to make their modest professional foundations (Aboutrika plays for the local Al-Ahli [6] sporting club) a springboard to major international achievement against top-class opposition (nine out of Cameroon’s eleven key players are professionals at world-class teams such as Barcelona and Chelsea).
The regular Egyptian person, without access to means of professional advancement and personal autonomy – a good education, reliable healthcare provision, a credible social-security system, an entrepreneurial economy [7], access to financing, availability of support networks such as IT infrastructure – can easily be seen as a laggard or even off the scale in terms of international competitiveness [7]. Indeed, a number of Arab social, political and economic analysts have done just that by emphasizing the huge – and ever increasing – gap between the productivity and wealth-generating capacity [7] of the individual Egyptian and his or her counterpart in south and east Asia, Latin America, and increasingly the Arab Gulf.
Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s [8] work The Culture of Defeat [9] examines the symptoms that reveal a defeatist sensibility in a society. Egypt’s current culture exemplifies almost all these symptoms: among them, the dominance of individuality; the lack of a national project or even a sense of national “togetherness”; waves of emigration of the best, the brightest and the most hopeless; a feeling of unworthiness and inferiority in relation to foreign cultures; a systematic belittling of what’s possible; a general disgruntlement that is apparent in daily encounters.
Yet every few years, a spark of hope illuminates the surrounding landscape. At one time, it was an ordinary Egyptian man who had never travelled outside the country’s borders, yet became a Nobel literature [10] laureate: Naguib Mahfouz [10]. At another moment, it was a man from Alexandria who - still speaking heavily accented English after twenty-four years in the United States - became a Nobel chemistry laureate: Ahmed Zewail [11]. In yet another time, it was a poor, slim girl from a humble Nile delta village called who became the Arab world’s (and perhaps the world’s) most extraordinary singing success: Umm Kalthoum [12].
These sparks of hope - at least emotionally, and for a long instant - break the chain of the culture of defeat.
Third, Egypt’s cup triumph is an event that, albeit for a short while, reminds Egyptians of pleasurable pursuits that they can indulge in; reminds them that there are things in their lives that they can watch, looking forward to other than securing for themselves and their families the basic needs of living. This is another confirmation of the renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow’s [13] portrait (in A Theory of Human Motivation) of the “hierarchy of needs [14]”: thus a pleasure of a higher rank (e.g. the contentment brought by the victory of one’s national football team) might - by lifting a person’s spirits and appreciation of life - exceeds one of a lower (e.g. securing bread for one’s children after standing for two hours in a queue).
Fourth, this event generates the rare sort of euphoria [15] that makes Egyptians parade through the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and other cities waving their national flag and roaring the name of their country – in pride! These are the same people, the same youths who apply in their hundreds of thousands for visas to rich Gulf states; who sending myriad applications (more than 4 million in 2007 alone) for the random United States green-card lottery; and who risk their lives to cross [16] the Mediterranean to find a better life in Europe.
Farouk Guida [17], a contemporary Egyptian poet, imagined the voice of one of the latter - a young man who drowned in sight of Italian shores after fleeing his homeland in search of life (not a better life, just life): “nothing is left in it but a false morning….a land screaming amidst the fires of oppression….don’t ask me about my home’s tears….about my mother’s grief as I drown….behind the clouds, my land has become mountains of darkness.”
Egypt’s winning – again, a simple winning – has inspired the same youths to see light in these mountains of darkness [17].
Fifth, this football moment is an occasion that was significant enough to make Egyptians - despite the pressures, oppressions, humiliations, and degradations that they typically experience in their daily lives - a happy people, even for one night.
For such an outcome alone, Mohamed Aboutrika and his colleagues deserve their reputation for “magic”.