“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Zamalek have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Juan Bezerra was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad29 May 2028
Words at Zamalek training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kwasi Sibo is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Zamalek they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad28 Feb 2028
Words at Zamalek training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Souffian El Karouani is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zamalek this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Nasser Mansi will call it something else in private.
3 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 24 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Ahmed Fatouh was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Words at Zamalek training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Omar Gaber is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Haras El Hodoud? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 61 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Two goals and a mark of 7.88 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Juan Bezerra was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
37 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Olympique Akbou lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mohamed Amine Gherbi is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Olympique Akbou this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Hamdi Labidi has improved at 25, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zamalek this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Youssef Wael commits to Zamalek for another 3 years.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Omar Gaber falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Zamalek, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
Nobody at Zamalek will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.