After Egypt’s calamitous defeat at the hands of lowly Costa Rica, the local press is demanding answers… Al-Ahram, one of the oldest newspapers in the Middle East and Egypt’s longest running daily, wants to know where all the money spent on developing the Young Pharaohs and preparing the team for this tournament went. LE 23 million ($4.2 million) spent and 95 warm-up matches later, and Egypt’s shabab, with home crowd support on the anniversary of Egypt’s great victory, were well beaten in the last 16 by a heavily unfancied Costa Rican side even after thumping the Italians in the group stages. A disappointed Al Ahram demands: “Who is responsible?†The paper mercilessly names those responsible, at various levels, for the team – starting with head coach Miroslav Soukup who was earning a whopping EUR 10,000 ($14,500) a month, before leaving the team following the early exit. Al-Shorouk, a recently introduced and well-written independent daily, lays the blame firmly at Soukup’s door, accusing his technical team of “failing to read the match†and saying the team lacked direction and organization, criticizing the “randomness†of their approach. It also described the coaching staff and players being attacked by fans throwing bottles of water at them after their bad performance. A separate article leads with the bizarre title: “Concerts of lies and a chorus of clowns are behind Egypt’s exitâ€. The main point is that the team was never really that good, and the hype after the win against Italy made Egypt seem like a better team than they were. Daily News Egypt, One of Egypt’s independent newspaper in English, wins the award for getting the coach to state the obvious: “We conceded a goal and as usual the whole team was affected by it and couldn't return to the game. We also had bad luck creating chances and the ones we had were saved by the goalkeeper so we couldn't change the score and conceded our second,” Egypt coach Miroslav Soukup said after the game. Daily News then notes that it was a round of upsets, with Czech Republic and Spain also losing in the final 16, with Italy, Ghana, and Hungary joining Costa Rica in the next round. Al Masry Al Youm, the popular independent daily, moves philosophically on from the defeat, and looks ahead to Egypt’s senior squad’s crucial world cup qualifier: a match the squad has vowed to win to compensate for the disappointment of the youth team. Don’t get your hopes up too much though, Al Masry is getting the excuses in early with complaints over how far the team had to travel, so on and so forth. All in all, a week that started hopefully for Egyptian football, after a resounding win against a strong Italian side, has ended in disappointment, with cautious glances towards the world cup qualifiers. Egypt expects, and another disappointment would be tough to swallow. BM
