Thirty-One Nil

by James Montague

  Bradley spent the months that followed Port Said trying to keep his players occupied with matches he’d managed to arrange. ‘When all of a sudden there’s no league, players are unsure of their careers or being paid anything at all,’ he explains. ‘We’ve been to Qatar a couple of times, Dubai, Sudan twice, Lebanon. We’ve played so many different teams, many African teams.’ Egypt were winning matches, too, eleven out of the thirteen Bradley had organised.

  Slowly, Bradley brought the Al Ahly players back into the fold. Mohamed Aboutrika and others reversed the decisions they made right after Port Said to retire. Although the league was now finished, Al Ahly still had some competitive games as they had qualified for the African Champions League. The club had vowed to win the competition in honour of the ‘Port Said martyrs’. Aboutrika had returned to the team and played a crucial role, as he always did, in their progress. He came on at half-time during a match with Stade Malien, from Mali. Ahly were 2-0 down on aggregate and heading out until Aboutrika scored an incredible second-half hat-trick. ‘We respected what the players had experienced,’ Bradley says. The key to Egypt’s World Cup successes, though, was Aboutrika. ‘He’s an incredible man, intelligent, high character, respected at the highest level in Egypt, in Africa and the Middle East,’ Bradley says with pride. ‘When we talked to him, the possibility of getting one more chance to go to the World Cup was something that meant so much to him. You could see in Aboutrika’s eyes this meant so much for him.’

  The World Cup had become something of a sore point in Egypt long before the revolution. Egypt had qualified for two finals in the past, both hosted by Italy. In 1934 (where they qualified by beating British Mandated Palestine, a forerunner of the Israel national team) they played only one game in the finals, losing 4-2 against Hungary. At Italia ’90 they were drawn in the same group as England, Ireland and Holland. It was a dire group which produced few goals yet Egypt had drawn against both the Dutch and the Irish. In Egypt’s final group match a second-half Mark Wright goal handed England a 1-0 victory, eliminating the Pharaohs in the process. For all their recent World Cup qualification failures, over the past decade Egypt have dominated African football. Al Ahly have won six African Champions League titles, the national team have won four Africa Cup of Nations titles since 1998 and yet they cannot turn their continental domination into winning a place at football’s biggest event. Qualification for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa was a case in point. Egypt was drawn in the same final group as Algeria. There has been bad blood between the two countries ever since a crucial qualification match in Cairo for Italia ’90. Egypt won but the so-called ‘death match’ was marred by riots on and off the pitch. The Egyptian team doctor even lost an eye in the melee.

  The two met again at the Cairo International Stadium in 2009. Egypt had to win 2-0 to force a play-off, which they did, but the circumstances were brutal. I had been in Cairo in the run-up to the match and watched as the state-run press whip the population into an anti-Algerian frenzy; watched Algerian fans being attacked by gangs of men; saw how the windows of the Algerian team bus were smashed on the way to the hotel, injuring several players, and then reported – and taken as fact by every Egyptian I met – that the Algerian players had injured themselves. ‘The Algerians are scared, that is why they want to humiliate Egypt,’ they would tell me. Almost everyone I had spoken to knew someone who knew someone who knew the Egyptian bus driver who had driven that coach and said that the Algerians had smashed the windows, then cut themselves in order to have the match cancelled. The problem was that a FIFA representative as well as a French film crew from Canal Plus had seen the whole thing. But that didn’t matter; the lie was told and believed. It was now impossible to erase. Mubarak met with the team before the game, his sons and heirs apparent wrapping themselves in the Egyptian flag and the presumed reflected glory of the national team. The noise during the match was frightening. When Egypt won 2-0 riots broke out around the stadium and around the world between Algerian and Egyptian fans. But Algeria would have the last laugh. In the play-off in neutral Sudan, Algeria won 1-0. They, and not the greatest Egyptian team of all time, would go to South Africa.

  The circumstances in which the game against Mozambique is being played could not be more different. Mubarak and his sons have gone, under arrest and awaiting trial. Before, political arguments were unheard of on the street, lest you were overheard by an informer or a policeman. Now the country discusses, argues and sometimes fights over its political views. You see it in Tahrir Square and elsewhere: groups of people arguing their point of view. Sometimes it ends in a fist fight but mostly they agree to disagree and go their separate ways. The Egyptian squad is no different. ‘I still ask a lot of questions and listen to the discussions that go on,’ Bradley explains of the politics within the group. Some are well known for their piety: Mohamed Aboutrika kneels and kisses the grass every time he scores. Others, like former Borussia Dortmund striker Mohamed Zidan, have been pictured kissing Mubarak’s hand in the past. ‘You see the players in discussion with the team staff. I try to listen and in recent weeks, as the election got closer and the run-off, I can tell when a political conversation takes place because it has a very different tone. When we’re in camps you can’t try to talk about football all the time.’ Bradley stops to explain himself. ‘I call it football now, not soccer,’ he says a little embarrassed.

  Bradley now has a full team to choose from, even if their preparations have been the stuff of nightmares. The Ahly players are back and others have emerged from overseas, too. There is Mohamed Salah, a young winger who has just started to make a name for himself at Basel in the Swiss league, and Ahmed Hegazy, who’s just moved to Fiorentina in Italy. There was also Adam El-Abd, a twenty-seven-year-old defender who played in English football’s second tier for Brighton and Hove Albion. ‘Yeah, it ’as, to be fair,’ he replies in his south coast British accent when I ask whether it was always a dream of his to play for the Egyptian national team. ‘It’s been one of my dreams to play for the national team because my dad is Egyptian and he’s the one that taught me football and he’s a very proud man to see me get a call-up.’ El-Abd was born in England and raised in English football. He is a no-nonsense central defender with a shaved head and what looks like a broken nose. When he made his debut in a friendly against Cameroon, one Egyptian fan edited a show reel of El-Abd’s contributions to the game and uploaded it on YouTube. It wasn’t what Egyptian fans were used to. They had been raised on pace, cultured movement and delicate, technical interplay. This was a video of crunching tackles and long clearances booted high into the stands. But that is what they wanted. As one Egypt fan told me: ‘Egypt needs a little English steel in the back.’ Not that El-Abd intimidates off the pitch. He speaks with a friendly, almost Beckhamesque politeness. ‘It was a great moment to make my debut and I enjoyed it,’ he says of the Cameroon game, although he doesn’t speak his team-mates’ language yet. ‘Arabic? Yeah, it’s difficult, I’m learning as I go,’ he says. ‘But football is a universal language so it’s not difficult to pick it up. I’ve learned a few phrases.’

  Which is the most useful one you’ve learned, I ask.

  ‘Ta’ala,’ he says quickly, pronouncing it ‘tar-ar-lar’ in his heavy English accent. ‘Which means “come here”.’ Despite making his debut for Egypt under Bradley, El-Abd can’t play in the Mozambique game. He has heard that morning that his Egyptian passport won’t be ready in time. ‘Not going to happen. Got passport issues,’ he says. ‘I came out here two weeks ago and was aware it could be a problem. One of the delays is that I’m a dual citizen so exempt from military service.’ But he will sit and watch the game from the bench and prepare himself for the next round of World Cup matches. He, too, watched back home as the revolution unfolded and hopes that the national team can play its part. ‘Yeah, we got relatives who are out and about amongst it,’ he says, referring to the protests in Tahrir Square. ‘It’s all going off. But it’s good for the country. It’s on the up.’ El-
Abd might never have represented England, but Egypt needs him. They had no one else quite like him. ‘The dream is to play in central defence and make it to the World Cup,’ he says. ‘But first I’ve got to get a passport.’

  Bob Bradley has also been picking up the odd Arabic phrase as he has gone along, but he has heard some words more than any others. ‘I don’t know much Arabic but I know muntakhab, national team, and Kas al Aalam,’ he says, ‘World Cup.’

  **

  The Borg el Arab Stadium may be miles from anywhere, but the military are not taking any chances. My taxi can’t get anywhere near the stadium. It is late in the afternoon and as the sun sets a line of military personnel, wearing white shirts and white trousers, stretches out beyond the horizon on both sides. A coachload of journalists are trying to get in but are being prevented by an army checkpoint; every passport and ID is examined. The Borg el Arab is a handsome stadium, in a very modern way; a huge bowl that has seen perhaps half a dozen football matches in its short life. The seats in one stand have been painted in the colours of the flag, with EGYPT spelled out in gold in the middle. It is Friday, the Islamic holy day, and match officials are spreading whatever fabric they have to pray in the concourses, in the cafeteria and by the side of the pitch. The Egyptian journalists join them. Several hundred police officers in riot gear protect the pitch and the tunnel from no one in particular. Adam El-Abd is sitting in his training gear in the Egypt dugout, looking for all the world like an Englishman. He is slurping on a cup of milky tea as the substitutes join him.

  A military band marches on to the grass before arranging itself into two perfect squares in the centre circle. The two teams enter the pitch to nothing but the sound of FIFA’s irritating anthem, before lining up for their own national anthems. Bob Bradley stands to attention as the full military band plays. In front of him his players all sing proudly. ‘We can’t count on the fans to pull us through,’ he had told me before the game. ‘But if the stadium was big enough, every single person in Egypt would be there with us.’ Despite the sterile environment, Egypt slowly and efficiently constrict Mozambique. I am standing by the touchline with the photographers, closer than I’d ever been to a World Cup match before. Aboutrika glides silently around the pitch like a bow-legged ghost. He finds space where he should have no good reason to find it, appearing behind an opposition player, receiving the ball and feeding it to a team-mate before any Mozambique player knows he’s been there. Bradley stands close to the action, arms crossed, observing with the intense air he has become known for. The first half finishes goalless, but Egypt don’t panic. In the second half Ahmed Hegazy, Fiorentina’s young centre-back, heads the ball across goal to his fellow centre-back, Mahmoud Fathalla, who slides in to give the Pharaohs the lead. Fatallah falls to his knees and kisses the grass. His team-mates do likewise, including Essam El-Hadary, Egypt’s goalkeeper, at the other end of the pitch. He gets up and points both his hands to the sky, to God.

  The second goal follows shortly afterwards. Mohamed Zidan is fed the ball through the centre and shoots. It hits the inside of the post, rebounds off the Mozambique goalkeeper’s head and into the empty net. It should, by rights, be an own goal, but Zidan kisses the ground, too. FIFA somehow still chalk it up as his goal. The match finishes 2-0. Bradley embraces each and every player as they come off the pitch. ‘It feels good,’ he says as he walks to the tunnel, letting his players go first. ‘It’s the first game, so you always want to get a good start. This is an important first step. There were a lot of positives, many positives.’ The Egyptian news media descend chaotically on Bradley’s post-match news conference. He has been praised by journalists for his grace under fire, for marching with the Ahlawy after Port Said, for donating money to the families of those who had died in the tragedy, for visiting a children’s cancer hospital and donating money to them, too. One Egyptian journalist chases after him, calling him Captain Bob. It is a nickname that will stick with him throughout the campaign. Pressmen, players, taxi drivers, bakers and doormen will all shout after Captain Bob. ‘This first win in World Cup qualification was for all the people of Egypt,’ he tells the packed press conference a few moments later, dedicating victory to the nation. ‘We talked before the game to look into the stands and to see ninety million fans,’ he says. ‘We knew they were all with us here tonight.’

  The victory against Mozambique, the birthplace of the late Eusébio, one of the greatest players of all time even if he did decide to represent Portugal, was routine. The match in Guinea’s capital Conakry nine days later was anything but. In front of a packed crowd, and in sweltering heat, Guinea went into half-time 1-0 up. But Mohamed Aboutrika scored with a brilliant volley at the start of the second before scoring a penalty shortly afterwards when Guinea’s goalkeeper was sent off. It looked as if Egypt would start their campaign with two wins out of two, but a brilliant last-minute solo goal by Alhassane Bangoura, a striker who plays for Rayo Vallecano in Spain’s La Liga, seemed to have earned Guinea a point. A point away from home would have been an acceptable result for Bradley, but in the fourth minute of injury time, Basel’s talented winger Mohamed Salah broke free on the right and his cross shot beat the goalkeeper. The referee blew his whistle and the match ended 3-2 to the Pharaohs. Bradley and the bench celebrated together. ‘It had been a tough place to come,’ Bradley would later tell me. ‘The heat was incredible and the country was so poor. Kids would be hanging through windows of the dressing room. We’d passed out what we could for them, pens, bottles of water, anything.’

  Back in Egypt I took a bus to the capital and left on a flight the next morning. Later that day Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life imprisonment. A few weeks later it emerged that Mohamed Zidan, the former Borussia Dortmund player who ‘scored’ the second goal against Mozambique, would never play a role for Egypt again either. The Egyptian FA alleged that he refused to play for Egypt when called up for the next round of fixtures, the home and away Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against the Central African Republic that had been postponed in the aftermath of Port Said. They slapped on him a life ban from the national team, accusing him of preferring to travel to China to inquire about the offer of a club contract. He would stoke further controversy after it was alleged that he visited Mubarak’s son Alaa in prison. Egypt lost the tie against the Central African Republic and failed to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations. After winning the title three times in succession they had now failed to reach the last two AFCoN finals. In the past that would have led to almost certain dismissal for the coach. But, surprisingly, the Egyptian FA backed Bradley to continue. They knew what was more important than anything else over the next eighteen months. Kas al Aalam. The World Cup.

  7

  ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, UNITED STATES

  Bradenton, Florida, USA. June 2012.

  Peter Byers and Olson Forde are standing on the edge of a man-made lake, squabbling like children over who gets to hold the fishing rod. The two players for the Antigua and Barbuda national team are still in their training kit and have retired to the lake to fish, but not for relaxation like the other surprised fisherman at the upmarket IMG sports academy and gated community complex near Tampa, Florida. The men around them have all stopped and put their rods down to watch the melee unfold, which is largely good-natured. Byers is Antigua and Barbuda’s top scorer in 2014 World Cup qualification while Forde is the team’s reserve goalkeeper. They have had enough of the low-calorie, super-healthy, high-performance, nutritionist-approved meals they have been served since they arrived in Florida a week ago in preparation for their next World Cup qualifier. This match is slightly different from the previous six that Antigua and Barbuda have won, largely at a stroll, destroying Caribbean island teams with impunity as they did so. In a few days they will be involved in what must be ranked as one of the greatest mismatches in the history of sport. Not that Byers and Forde look nervous or preoccupied with anything other than going after better food. They have borrowed a rod, line and a hook and are now fishi
ng for their dinner.

  ‘I’m from the ghetto in Antigua, I know what to do with the fish,’ laughs Byers, showing a large gap between his teeth, after winning the battle for the rod. Forde has given up his claim and is now advising Byers where to cast his line. Behind the two players sits a plastic bowl half full of bluegill fish. They flap disconsolately, gasping their last breaths. ‘We’re gonna steam ’em up,’ Byers explains, gesturing to the fish behind him, when I ask what he’s going to do with them. ‘I’m used to catching fish bigger than me!’ he boasts, listing his greatest triumphs. Blue marlin, swordfish, tuna. His rod dips as another bluegill nibbles at his hook. Byers yanks it hard and reels in quickly, landing the fish on the grass. But he isn’t satisfied with his catch and gently unhooks it. It’s too small to eat, he says, and he throws it back into the lake. It will live to fight another day.

  Bradenton is an unassuming town of some 50,000 people a few miles south of Tampa, yet it is something of a Petri dish for the United States Soccer Federation. Since 1999 the USSF has run an Under 17s residency programme here for the brightest and best American talent. Players like Landon Donovan and Michael Bradley have graduated from Bradenton. It was also here that a thirteen-year-old Freddy Adu was brought when his prodigious, but, in the end, unfulfilled talent was first discovered. The rest of the sprawling complex of upmarket condos, tennis courts, American football fields, baseball mounds, soccer pitches, manicured lawns, golf carts and lakes are usually given over to wealthy summer school kids looking to hone their sporting skills. Or, if you could afford it, you could simply purchase a condo and live within its gates, guarded around the clock. A house would set you back anything up to $3 million. It isn’t a place in which the Antiguans would normally train. It isn’t a place that the Antiguans could normally afford. And it certainly isn’t a place where international footballers are seen fishing for their supper. According to Joe, an elderly former baseball pro who moved to Florida for some peace, quiet and fishing, and from whom the players have commandeered their rod, it is the first time he’s seen an athlete fish for his dinner in the lake. He warns the players that bluegills are not the only creatures that lurk beneath the water. Alligators live here, too. I take a step back from the edge. Byers and Forde don’t move. ‘Alligators?’ Byers snorts dismissively. ‘We ain’t afraid of nothing.’