Following the Zamalek debacle, the decision to resume the national football league on 13 April is a brave one, but Inas Mazhar wonders if it's worth the risk Though investigations are still ongoing, the decision to resume the national league, with fans in attendance, has been approved by Prime Minister Essam Sharaf. The decision came just three days after he himself had announced the league should be cancelled after a pitch invasion of thousands marred an African cup match between hosts Zamalek and Club Africain of Tunisia in Cairo Stadium on Saturday. The following day of that climatic chaos, Sharaf announced the league should be scrapped, a decision which was seconded by the National Sports Council and the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) which agreed that the event be postponed indefinitely. The Zamalek fiasco left 20 people injured, nine of whom were players from the two teams. It was reported that 40 people were arrested and are currently being investigated. Tough penalties await Zamalek club from the African federation, or CAF. President of the Algerian federation Mohamed Rawrawa has asked CAF not to assign Algerian referees to future matches that involve either Egyptian clubs or those held in Egypt (last week's referee was Algerian) and South Africa has asked CAF to move its match against Egypt in an African qualifier in June in Cairo to neutral territory. The decision to resume the league is an apparent attempt to bettering the image of the country's security situation which took a beating following the Zamalek mess. The government seems to want to show to Egyptians and beyond that the country is safe and to prove it, football should be played. Another explanation is purely financial. It is an attempt to save Egyptian football clubs from bankruptcy and maintain the sporting business in the country. The clubs have been seriously affected by the league suspension in which play was stopped due to the demonstrations which erupted across the country starting on 25 January and which ousted Hosni Mubarak as president. In the past three months, clubs have lost millions of pounds. According to top Ahli club official Adli El-Qei, the country's most successful club in the country lost around LE20 million during the same period whereas the same amount was lost by the rest of the clubs. Ittihad of Alexandria has declared bankruptcy while others who lie at the bottom of the standings are close to doing the same. They say they are currently out of business and cannot pay the salaries of their players since sponsors have refused to pay for the suspended period. The EFA is currently studying several lucrative offers from various agencies in the country to choose from. The winning agency would market all the activities of the federation in the next few years. But that was before 25 January. Now, the deals are less and the offers lower because of poor business. Al-Ahram's Pyramids Agency lost a great deal itself because the sponsors, to whom it has sold the rights, have reduced their instalments because of the suspension of the league. The agency also failed to pay its share to the EFA and the football clubs. In the Zamalek game, in which around 3,000 people flooded the pitch before the game ended, damages to Cairo Stadium were estimated at LE2.5 million. The Al-Ahram Pyramids Advertising Agency, sponsor of the EFA with a LE40 million, four-year contract, lost over LE2 million after its electric advertising board that surrounds the pitch was damaged. The breaking of advertising billboards surrounding the pitch added to the material damage. Nobody can deny the lack of security following the as yet mysterious disappearance of the police from the streets across Egypt in the early days of the revolt. So, the question is: is it safe for the league to resume? Only about 60 per cent of the police force are back on the streets, so are there any guarantees that what happened in the Zamalek game will not happen in the future, and that if it does, what will the response be of the few police forces who are working? It seems that the only people happy with the return of the league are the club officials and players. Egyptians themselves do not seem to care less about football these days as much as about their revolution and all its side effects. Before the revolution, football was one of the few entertainment outlets Egyptians had. In post-revolution Egypt, politics has become the major talking point. Few are following the investigations as to why the Zamalek club events happened and who was behind them. Most actually seem to be fed up with conspiracy theories and acts of sabotage owed to the counter-revolution. But the public agrees on one thing: the Zamalek incident has come to reveal a stark reality, that of a glaring lack of security in the country. The police have lost not only their authority but the respect of the citizenry as well. Accordingly, thuggery prevails, and those who rushed onto the pitch were no doubt a mix of thugs and fanatic fans. This, even though reports say both the police and the army were informed hours before the match of a possible invasion of thousands of armed thugs. The information was passed on to the police and army by stadium manager Major General Abdel-Aziz Amin but it seems no action was taken beforehand (it is odd, though, that in order to launch such a field invasion, one needs to be a circus acrobat to be able to get past the iron gates). Ironically, Amin himself is a suspect now, being a former guard to former first lady Suzanne Mubarak and her sons Gamal and Alaa. It is rumoured that the main reason for the police not taking any action in the Zamalek game was the fear that should they hit or detain any one, they would be accused of violating human rights, thus widening the gap between themselves and the public. Deciding to bring back the league needs guarantees which can only be given by the police. Egypt's Minister of Interior Mansour El-Eissawi was scheduled to give a press conference yesterday in which he was to outline how the police will secure league matches in the future. (see p.23)
