Back to glory

By: Tamim | May 27th, 2008

it was a white night in cairo and why shouldn’t it be, zamalek won his 21th cup and his first title from four years. egypt cup final zamalek and enppi ended 2-1 for us scored by osama hassan and the magnificent amr zaki to announce for the beginning of long awaited celebrations. also hazem emam had a big part of the cake before he match

losing the last 2 matches in the league, everyone seemed to lose hope in anything and a lot started to think about the black days this club was going to witness after they lose the cup, but no, zamalek’s most faithful fans believed and were there in the cairo stadium to say there word. they came in huge numbers to make a record for attendance in zamalek’s matches lately and once again they proved they are the most loyal to their club.

personally, i think that any 11 players who would play in such an atmosphere would fight for the cup even if they can\t play football. so both sets of players entered the field astonished by the huge fans and started to warm up for the game.

zamalek players made a surprise for the team’s captain who was planning to retire after the match by wearing a shirt saying no for the retirement; at the same time the fans tarted cheering his name and it became emotional which made him cry.

in such an emotional atmosphere the match started, zamalek players were shaky and hesitated maybe because of the excess pressure on them, enppi on the other side started to pass the ball and created a couple of dangerous chances while zamalek depended on counter attack and wasted a couple a chances also. from on of those attacks gamal hamza won a penalty and osama hassan took it and made it 1-0. the players started to have confidence and abd el monsef continued his heroic performance. before the end shikabala hit the post after a one on one with enppi goalkeeper, a ball which could have ended the match.

in the second half, enppi started attacking and in the 17th minute scored the equalizer from a header. suddenly all dreams seemed to vanquish and the stadium went into silence. luckily amr zaki put things in the right track again quickly before tension started to rise and made it 2-1 from an extra ordinary skill of his. the rest of the half was one way toward zamalek’s goal but the defense hanged on.

the referee whistled and happiness was ever where, hazem lifted the cup and celebrated with the fans in a night to remember.

we won the cup;however, this shouldn’t by anyway blind us from the fact that half of this team needs to be given a red card. honestly our performance wasn’t good at all. we depended heavily on the personl skill of the attacking trio of amr, gamal and shikabala.we need to find a new descent coach and buy a right winger, left winger, a whole defense line and an excellent striker to replace amr zaki.

one last point, what was that ref doing???. i didn’t get it really, he gave almost every one a yellow card, sent our assistant manager out and lost control of the game and seemed nervous!!.

here are the goals