After a historic three consecutive Africa Cup of Nations titles, the Egyptian national team is set to fail to qualify for the tournament for the third time in a row thanks to two defeats in the first two qualifying games against Senegal away from home and Tunisia at home. The national team played poorly in both games and unfortunately most of our overseas stars failed to flourish at the international stage once again which contributed big time to the disappointing results. Starting from the back, Ali Ghazal who plays for Portuguese club Nacional and Ahmed Said Okka who just returned to Semouha from Lierse both had a very bad day at the office and failed to deal with the speed and trickery of Stoke City's Mame Diouf who scored the first goal for Senegal after receiving a through ball behind the defensive duo to slot it home past the helpless Ekrami. Apart from the goal both stoppers committed endless mistakes throughout the game which raised eyebrows as both of them are playing at the top of their game especially Ghazal who's in terrific form this season. Hull City's star man Ahmed Al-Mohamadi once again failed to shine with the national team which led to calls for omitting him from the starting eleven after another bad performance to add to his already long list of bad performances with the national team even though he's one of the few undisputed start at Hull City. In midfield, Basel's duo Al-Nenni and Hamoudi were a shadow of themselves as Hamoudi was replaced at half time by Amr Gamal after a very poor first half that saw him fail to do anything spectacular. At the front, our star man Mohamed Salah was surprisingly poor and lacked his usual touch of class probably due to the lack of playing time at Chelsea. Salah didn't play a single minute for his club prior to the international break which showed in his performance as he lacked the intensity and final touch. The second game was even worse for the national team as Tunisia controlled the game from the very first minute till the last second even though the game was in Egypt. Al-Mohamadi, Hamoudi and Shawki Al-Saeed were replaced by Hazem Emam, Mohamed Abdel-Shafi and Amr Gamal in the starting line-up but unfortunately the end result was the same. Ghazal and Okka were pathetic; it looked as if they were playing football for the first time in their lives. Hossam Ghali, who's the captain and one of the most experienced players in the national team, was extremely weak and was replaced by Hosni Abd Rabo after 35 minutes while Al-Nenni was having a tough time in the middle of the park. Salah was once again a shadow of the player we all know and couldn't manage to test the goalkeeper throughout the 90 minutes. Former Zamalek coach Ahmed Hossam Mido said that the disappointing performances and results were due to picking unqualified players just because they play abroad and not because they really have what it takes to play for the national team. Moreover, it's pretty obvious that the pressure of playing for the national team is totally different than the pressure when playing for a club team week in, week out. A player like Al-Mohamadi for example is considered one of the most consistent Egyptian players abroad but rarely shines for the Egyptian national team. It's not for the lack of effort but the lack of link-up play between him and the rest of the squad. The likes of Ghazal, Ahmed Hassan Kouka and Al-Nenni are all 22 years old or less which means they don't have the experience needed to compete at the international stage even if Mohamed Salah, at 22, always shines for the national team apart from these two games. The national team players need time to gel and know each other as most of the players in the current squad are still at the very start of their international career which was very obvious as the communication on the field and link-up play seem tremendously substandard. Furthermore, our overseas stars certainly need to go that extra mile and put more effort when they appear for the national team as most of them seem afraid of picking up injuries which affects their club games. Let's hope coach Shawki Gharib will find a way to get his team ready for the remaining four games which Egypt probably have to win all to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations. The writer is a freelance journalist.
