Zamalek 1 – Haras el hdoud 0: Too late!!

By: Tamim | April 22nd, 2008

yesterday, zamalek beat haras el hdoud 1-0 to raise its points to the number 46 and confirm its second place. gamal hamza scored the only goal but what a goal!!, it was one of those goals that you don’t see a lot.

Haras el hdoud’s game was never an easy game to play, they are a team which has a lot of good players in harmony with each other and enjoy good physical strength, in fact i think that they present some of the best football in egypt and so it was one of the toughest matches of the season.

Although ahly won the title earlier yesterday, the game was important for zamalek in the battle for second place or a champions league spot next season. competing with him are el gaish and ismaily who are playing today as i write these words.

the match

line up:mohamed abd el monsef, ahmed magdy,amr el safty,karim zekry,mohamed abdallah,mohamed ebrahim,abo el ela,amed ghanem soltan,shikabala,gamal hamza,sherif ashraf.

the team was missing some key players like beshir el tabei and mahmoud fathallah in defense and amr zaki in attack so they had to play with ahmed magdy as a sweeper, where he has been performing very well lately, and sherif ashraf in attack. reasons behind amr zaki’s absence aren’t quiet clear, officially it is said to be injury but rumors says it that he showed disrespect during a training session so he was pulled out of the roster.

the match itself was quiet good, the players put up a good performance especially in the first half, but the team still needs to work on this miss-passing problem and team work. right now we have talents like shikabala and gamal hamza that can turn a match upside down when needed but we can’t count on them all the time.

defenders showed a very high spirit and did a great job stopping el haras counter attacks but sometimes they seemed very sloppy, no to mention a stupid mistake from ahmed magdy that could have cost us a penalty.

in attack, shikabala was very dangerous in both the left and right flank, him and gamal hamza formed an extremely dangerous couple that can score at any time. however, sherif ashraf seemed not to be there but i don’t blame him as the midfielders didn’t supply him with enough balls and he had to go get the ball and start to attack which costs time.

the goal came from a deflected ball from haras’s defense which ahmed ghanem gathered and sent to gamal hamza who dribbled the ball over the defender and shot directly at the goal. they also missed a lot of great chances, the most dangerous one came from karim zaekry’s header which took kameny -haras goal keeper- an extra effort to put it away.

conclusion

not a bad performance for a semi-dead game, however we need to show more spirit at inter club’s match. what confuses me is that the team started to do well in very late, if they played like that since the beginning we would have been biting our nails now waiting for the champion.

watch gamal hamza’s goal

wait for a preview for inter club match in the cl