Egypt’s loss spurs blame and conspiracy theories

The Egyptian national football team’s dazzling 6-1 loss to Ghana yesterday provokes the predictable mix of distraught soul-searching, blame and anger in today’s press, as Egypt reconciles itself to what may be the end of its World Cup dream.

Egypt faces Ghana again in Cairo on November 19, but has to win by several points to move on to the next round, a feat which many see as highly unlikely. The match may be moved out of Cairo due to safety concerns.

“Disaster,” “embarrassment” and “Bob Bradley” are the watchwords in the news today, with football fans clamoring for the American coach to get the axe following his squad’s “nightmare” in Kumasi.

The privately-owned Al-Shorouk newspaper reports that the Egyptian Football Federation will hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the match, and says that there is consensus within the federation that Bradley must be removed.

The decision will come at a price, however: Bradley’s contract states that in the event of his being fired the federation must pay a $300,000 severance fee. Football news website Yallakora reported that federation head Gamal Allam said this clause will prevent them from firing Bradley at the moment.

Bradley himself has taken full responsibility for the defeat, saying in a press conference that he is mournful not only about the loss, but about making Egyptians sad on the first day of Eid el-Adha celebrations.

Yallakora also describes a slice of drama from Kumasi: Amr Zaki left the pitch in the 57th minute of the game in anger at his team’s performance after Ghana scored its fourth goal.

Zaki is reported to have said to goalkeeper Sherif Ikrami: “I told you from the start this would happen.” Ikrami reportedly coaxed him back onto the pitch.

Sports analyst Hassan Al-Mestakawi meanwhile gives us the bombshell that Ghana won because its players have greater sporting ability than their Egyptian opponents.

State news portal Egynews also reports that Mestakawi told sports commentator Ahmed Shobeir that the media is dealing with the match “as if it’s a war.”

In fact, some media outlets seem to just have slightly adapted the standard formula of paranoid conspiracy theory plus complete absence of independent, reasoned inquiry they use to report on politics, to cover the match.

A prime example of this is a piece in state daily Al-Ahram, which carries dark warnings from the Lawyers’ Syndicate’s Freedom Committee that the match result will be exploited for political purposes and suggests that it was a plot by enemy bodies.

In a thinly veiled allusion to either the Muslim Brotherhood or the Ultras football fans — or both — the committee calls on Egyptians to ignore invitations to protest from “any group” seeking to exploit supporters’ dissatisfaction with the result in order to demonstrate in a way injurious to the national squad or which exploits it for political purposes.

The squad arrives back in Egypt at 9 pm tonight and the committee says it will receive the team “with flowers.” It also instructs Egyptians to ignore inflammatory calls against the national team or state buildings.

The goal difference between Ghana and Egypt raises suspicions about a plot against the national team from “an enemy group against the Egyptian people’s revolution in its first wave on January 25 and its second on June 30,” the committee posits, pointing to both suspicious decisions during the game by referee Bosha’ab Al-Ahrash and political posters seen in the stadium — some Ghana supporters held up the yellow Rabea four fingers sign associated with Muslim Brotherhood protests.

Committee spokesman Asaad Haikal said that they are preparing a legal memorandum that it will present to football governing body FIFA in which it will call for the match result to be cancelled.

Independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, known for its bias against the Muslim Brotherhood, kills two birds with one stone with a headline today, by making reference to the demonstrations the Brotherhood called for yesterday: “The Brotherhood failed where the national team succeeded in ruining Eid joy.”

Looking forward, head of al-Nasr al-Sufi political party Mohamed Salah Zayed calls for all sporting activity to be halted indefinitely until it has been cleansed of politics.

Quoted in Egynews, Zayed says that groups such as the Ultras have knocked football off its correct course.

The Ultras group, Zayed says, was formed in “vague circumstances,” is politicized and is a “tool used for destructive purposes rather than well-behaved supporting to such an extent that it is a threat to national security.”

To support his case Zayed makes reference to the Port Said Stadium massacre of February 2012 when 74 men were killed during an Ahly-Port Said match and protests calling for the removal of Zamalek football club chairman Mamdouh Abbas that coincided with army counter-terrorism operations in Kerdassa and elsewhere, as if the Ultras “were not in Egypt.”

On Tuesday, 25 members of the Ultras Ahlawy football fans group were sent to Wadi al-Natroun prison after the prosecution ordered their detention for 15 days pending investigations. They were arrested and charged with attempted murder and vandalism after clashes with the police erupted at the Cairo International Airport on Sunday when they went to welcome the Ahly handball team who had just arrived from Morocco.