Ahli beat arch-rivals Zamalek to win the national football league trophy for the second consecutive year. Inas Mazhar reports Ahli on Sunday killed two birds with one stone, retaining the league championship while beating their famed rivals Zamalek 2-0. The win gave Ahli 66 points, an insurmountable 11 points ahead of second-place Zamalek. Each team has two games remaining. The game effectively ended after just 10 minutes. Ahli striker Emad Meteb opened the scoring when he netted from close range with just eight minutes into the game. Meteb found himself trapped in the box, passed to midfielder Mohamed Abou Treika, who shot a rifle which hit the left post and rebounded for Meteb to put into an empty net. Three minutes later, Abou Treika silenced the Zamalek crowd when he maneuvered in the box to tuck the ball neatly to the right of goalkeeper Mohamed Abdel-Monsif. Ahli could have added two more goals when Abou Treika, voted the game's MVP, had his shot sail over the bar while in the second half the Angolan Flavio, searching for only his second goal of the season, again failed, this time with a header in front of an open goalmouth. Zamalek's only chance came from the team's striker Abdel-Halim Ali, who in the second half and with only Essam El-Hadari to beat, sent the ball right of the post, a ball that many in the stands thought was a goal. Ali has 10 goals and was for most of the season in a tight duel with Abou Treika, who now has 15 goals, for top scorer. Before the kick-off, few believed the Ahli-Zamalek derby, which ended 0-0 in the first half of the season, would be a one-sided game. Zamalek played the best football of any club in the second half of the season winning all their games save a draw. Ahli had been winning as well but without providing the kind of football that they produced the first half of the season. Zamalek went into Sunday's game needing a win to have any hope of taking the league title. There would be no other alternative, whereas a draw would give Ahli the crown. Even a loss for Ahli would not mean the end of the world for the red shirts. The encounter was a game between two different teams; a team that owned a ball and knew very well how to play with it and a team that never possessed the ball. And there were reasons for the wide gap in the level of performance between the two teams. Ahli were confident and collected and motivated to win the league title and maintain what is now a 54-game unbeaten streak in the national league, an Egyptian record previously held by Zamalek. And the brilliant performance of the players, especially the Bermuda triangle of Mohamed Barakat, Meteb and Abou Treika, put the team in perfect shape. The trio constantly bewildered Zamalek's defenders with their speed, talent, skills and determination. On Sunday, Ahli deserved the praise and admiration of all, even from Zamalek fans and officials. Zamalek, despite the stability the team has seen in the past weeks, looked like someone lost in a desert, like a team that lacked everything: confidence, tactics, defence and motivation. It was the worst game the white shirts had played all season. They were absent in the first half and only slightly existed in the second after the head Portuguese coach Cajoda made some changes. However, the changes never made much of a difference. While in the stands with the club's board members and Ahli officials, Zamalek club president Murtada Mansour started shouting, infuriated by the performance. He announced that the technical staff will be sacked after the match because, he said, they had failed to lead the team to victory. He added that he was surprised by the team's performance, just like everybody else. He blamed Cajoda for a bad line-up and for not making the right substitutions. Mansour then a turn-around, saying he might allow Cajoda and his men to continue their job for the remaining two league games, but that there will be a new coach to lead the team in the FA Cup. But the Zamalek club's board members said Murtada's decisions would not be final because such decisive resolutions must emanate from a majority vote at a board meeting.
