Zamalek Is The Champion Of The Egyptian League

There is nothing new for a team to win the football league title in its country. And it is not strange for Zamalek, one of the two poles of the ball in Egypt, to win the title. But many facts indicate that this particular title has a special taste for fans of the white team, as it has a taste different from the traditional competitor.

Zamalek succeeded in winning the Egyptian League title yesterday, Monday, 3 rounds before the end. It leads by 7 full points over Pyramids, which has only two matches left, and by 11 points from its rival and traditional rival Al-Ahly.

But why do we say that this title has a special taste?

The new title is number 14 for Zamalek, which is much less than Al-Ahly, who has 43 titles in the Egyptian League. But what makes the team’s supporters proud of it is that it is the second in a row against a competitor that rarely gives up titles, and who had retained the title for 5 consecutive seasons before Zamalek seized it last season.

Zamalek officially won the league 3 rounds before the end, with a comfortable difference from its competitors and followers. It is remarkable that the follower of the Egyptian sports issue was noticing a kind of acknowledgment that the championship will be for Zamalek this year even before its end by 7 or 8 rounds. This appeared in the comments of the sports media and even in official statements of competitors and writings for their fans.

The league title came a few weeks after winning the Egyptian Football Cup last season and by defeating Al-Ahly, the traditional rival in the final match. A tournament that was delayed to complete so that its final match will be held in the middle of this season.

Winning the local league championship this season and before last season coincided with the full application of the mouse technique in Egypt for the first time. This is supposed to help referees apply justice, knowing that the fans of Zamalek often used to complain about arbitration and accuse him of siding with Al-Ahly, the most popular and with most titles.

Difficult conditions

But the most pivotal point in the special status of this title for Zamalek and its fans is related to the difficult conditions that the team went through during different periods of the season. That made the dream of retaining the title seem unattainable even for Zamalek fans themselves.

Zamalek entered the competitions deprived of the possibility to strengthen its ranks due to a penalty imposed by the International Sports Court by depriving it of registering new players over two registration periods, due to a violation related to the registration of the emerging player Hossam Ashraf.

Zamalek also started the season without the Tunisian Ferjani Sassi, the playmaker, who starred with the team the previous season and was among the reasons for winning the league championship and participated in scoring 33 goals during 103 matches.

A state of administrative instability coincided with that, as the club’s board of directors headed by Mortada Mansour left, and the Ministry of Youth appointed a temporary committee to manage the club, claiming financial irregularities before Mortada returned again to the presidency of the club after winning the confidence of the General Assembly.

After 11 rounds of the competition, Zamalek suffered an impressive shock, as French coach Patrice Carteron was sacked due to poor results, especially in the African Champions League. Many expressed their fear of the danger of changing the coach during the season. But some were optimistic that the new coach is the Portuguese Josevaldo Ferreira, who had previously Led the team to winning the league and national cup twice, in the 2015-2016 season.

It did not stop at the inability to strengthen the ranks at the beginning of the season, as the shocks continued, and Zamalek lost a lot of its influential stars for various reasons.

Departure of stars

The club did not reach an agreement to renew the contract with its main goalkeeper, Mohamed Abu Jabal, after his brilliance with the Egyptian national team in the last African Nations Cup, as well as with Tariq Hamed, who was the most prominent midfielder in recent years, ending up being suspended for disciplinary reasons and then leaving the team midseason.

Due to the extension of the season by about two months from the normal dates in various countries of the world, the Moroccan Ashraf Ben Sharqi, the most prominent striker of the team, was forced to leave 7 matches before the end due to the expiration of his contract at the end of the season which has not actually ended! And Zamalek chose not to argue with the player so that his career and his compatriot Mohamed Onajem ended with the team at a crucial time in the competition, prior to 9 rounds before its end.

The team had to change the way of playing to compensate for the multiple absences and used midfielder Mohamed Abdel Ghani in the center of the defense. It also hired several young players and pushed them to the starting lineup at critical times. But they were up to the responsibility and some of them starred remarkably like Mohamed Sayed, the famous Neymar, and Hossam Abdul Majeed, who proved themselves in the team, in addition to Youssef Osama Nabih and Saif Farouk Jaafar.