The miracle game

Exactly four minutes and 42 seconds later, or 78 seconds before elimination from the first ever World Cup Finals to be held on their own continent, the same Egyptian fans were suddenly enveloped by a human waterfall, a cascade of red-shirted, face-painted, fist-pumping bodies, all illuminated by red flares and unencumbered by gravity. Left-back Sayed Moawed had just collected the ball after another cross flashed across Algeria’s penalty area and drifted across towards the far post. Waiting to meet it was substitute striker Emad Moteab who, despite falling backwards, jack-knifed a header past the right hand of Algeria’s goalkeeper Lounes Gaouaoui. The miracle had happened. The emotion erupting all around the mammoth, two-tiered arena was a cocktail of elation and exhilaration, relief and redemption. 

 

There was, of course, nothing final about the final whistle that then concluded the latest chapter of the Egypt-Algeria rivalry. After 90 minutes of fevered action, a day of animation, a week of accusation, over a year of anticipation and more than three decades of acrimony and poorly-disguised animosity, the 2-0 scoreline meant the pair, now tied at the summit of Group C with identical records, would meet for a third time in six months – this time in Khartoum five days later. Global football rivalries may revolve around Brazil versus Argentina, Germany versus England and Italy versus entertainment, but if the game in Cairo on Saturday, November 14th concluded anything, it was that another fixture needed to be added to the list. 

 

The text messages started pouring in the moment I arrived in Cairo on the Friday before the game. News of the Algerian team bus being subjected to a barrage of rocks from Egyptian fans as they drove through the capital from the airport, leaving several of the players with cuts to their head, was starting to filter around the world. SMS expressions of concern ranged from “be safe” to “are you out of your f***ing mind?” as my taxi headed along what I assumed was much the same route. The event was, entirely shamefully, denied by the Egyptian FA, with conspiratorial tales of self-inflicted wounds and propaganda motives that would make a seasoned reporter on the Israel-Palestine conflict smile in recognition. They were, slightly less surprisingly, repeated by my driver, just as the radio broadcast news of FIFA’s official investigation into the incident. Unperturbed, he launched into a history lecture that blamed America before repeatedly referencing Egypt’s deeds of 1973, as though this football match against a fellow Arab Muslim state was another manifestation of anti-colonial resistance. “An Egypt win,” he intoned as we reached the hotel on the edge of Khan al-Khalili, “is a win for justice.”

 

On the other side of the divide, Algerian fans had made YouTube videos mistranslating Hitler’s meltdown in Downfall to denigrate their opponents. They Photoshopped faces of famous actresses onto Egyptian team shots and even repurposed Mel Gibson’s Braveheart as an anti-Egyptian hero. Algerian journalists made disparaging remarks about Egypt’s role in the recent Gaza crisis.

 

According to NOX writer and Middle East football expert James Montague, who was waiting for me at the hotel with the latest diplomatic updates, neither country’s officials were exactly helping to calm the situation. “I went to get our tickets two days ago,” said James, looking as though he’d been asked to bareknuckle fight for them. “But the Egyptian FA had given the wrong day for collection. There was nearly a riot. I was then prevented from taking pictures by the police, and even when I put my camera way, they actually tried to stop me talking to anyone!” Similarly, there were protests outside Cairo’s Algerian Embassy, with expats complaining about a corrupt allocation of the modest 2,000 tickets available for away fans. 

 

James, though, had returned to collect our tickets earlier that morning, mainly thanks to some admirable schmoozing of former Zamalek midfielder Ayman Younis. The slender green tickets, with the odd legend of “Control 2” printed across the front, were the most coveted possessions in Cairo. We later learn we could have swapped them for $500 each.

 

The following lunchtime, heads thick with last night’s Stella, we gathered for a late breakfast in the hotel lobby. The owners shook our hands as though we were being sent out to battle, demanded we brought back flags and banners for the upper balconies, and insisted we needed to get to the stadium by 1pm in order to get in before they shut the gates. This was, remember, for a game that began at 7.30pm. 

 

Having been joined by Alex, another NOX contributor and Dubai resident, who was in town to interview Omar Sharif, we downed insufficiently potent Nescafés and proceeded to try and find a taxi. After three had shaken their heads when we said the word “Stade”, the offer of 30 Pounds persuaded the fourth that the congestion would be worth it. After a minute, he was not only regretting his decision but bemoaning all the fuss over “just a game”. “It’s not a war,” he said, slamming his breaks to avoid a bus vomiting red, white and black-clad fans. “We are brothers. Whoever wins I will support them in South Africa, so why all this hate?” My attempts to convince him that a passionate desire to see one team beat another is the essence of every sport fell on deaf ears – perhaps because I didn’t know the Arabic for “essence”.  

 

Things were barely quieter a kilometre or so around the corner, where the gate to our section was located. We were in what are impolitely called the cheap seats, and it was not only where the hardcore fans were congregating, but the likeliest spot for gaining illegal entry into the biggest match of the century; a plain-clothes security guard was administering frightening whacks to the heads of the ticketless with the remnants of a flagpole. When we reached him, he screamed “Are you Algerian?” about 15 times in our faces before our collection of Egyptian ephemera was accepted as proof that we were neither from Algiers nor desperate to be so. James would later take a series of shots of a police baton charge at the same gate, only for the senior-most officer to supervise their deletion from his digital camera before being allowed to re-enter the stadium. Alex and I simply pretended to be Manchester United fans to satisfy local interest. 

 

The sense of occasion was reflected in a crowd that was a surprising blend of gender, age and class. Three headscarved women were sitting to our left, one cradling a baby that was managing to sleep despite an enormous drum being banged within three feet of his small head, just next to a group of middle-class kids with matching t-shirts and “F**k Algeria” on their faces. Some shabab behind us then grabbed our shoulders in an alternate-seat rowing move that had the whole arena rippling like a field of corn. Then came successive Mexican waves, two calls to prayer, roughly 20 laps by a Segway convoy bearing the sponsor’s logo, and an on-field announcer suggesting the fans save their voices for the game. 

 

“Most of my friends thought I was crazy to come,” said Haleem Abu Abboud, a Jordanian who also made the trip from Amman and who took up seats only a few rows from us. “My father said it would be dangerous and unsafe, and asked why I didn’t go to Qatar and watch England-Brazil instead! Okay, it’s not that organised here but the fans, the colour, the noise, the sheer passion, I wouldn’t have missed this – I’m so glad I made the effort. I’ve been to games across Europe and England, but I’ve never seen anything like this.” 

 

Alex spent much of the time shaking his head in disbelief, not least when a cheerleader climbed to the summit of a speaker and, in an eerier, half-lit arena, began leading the flag-bearing crowd in a series of rousing songs celebrating “Ya mua’llam” Hassan Shehata, the national team coach. Banners around us insisted that the fans would “never be a sword aimed at the necks” of the team, and that they were “together with you in defeat before victory as long as you try to make us happy”. Another simply said “Sorry Algeria”. Not that the visiting fans could have read it. Algeria’s support was restricted to a heavily-segregated pen high above the half-way line, and what noise they made rarely trickled down to pitch level. 

 

When the players did finally emerge onto the field, the tension was tangible. Amr Zaki took a moment to pray in solitude, balloons and firecracker smoke floated skywards and four years’ preparation was set to be distilled into 90 minutes’ football on a cool Cairene evening. While Algeria had dominated Group C from the beginning, Egypt’s unedifying and wholly unconvincing wins against Zambia and Rwanda – yes, Rwanda – meant they still had a whiff of South Africa in their nostrils. The arithmetic was simple: Egypt win by two goals and a play-off is required, more and they’re on the plane to South Africa, less and Algeria are through. 

 

Amr Zaki, proving that someone was listening, slid home the first of the required goals after 100 seconds, but the avalanche never materialised. What followed was a nervous, fractious and often ill-tempered contest in which anxiety out-gunned enterprise; long periods of Egyptian possession resulted in few goal-mouth incidents, despite the promptings of Mohamed Zidan. The miracle remained suspended for the next 92 minutes. Then Emad Motaeb’s header changed everything. “I found myself prostrating to God,” confessed Islam, “and I can recall a kind of obscure happiness when I saw the Algerian fan and player reactions.” 

 

“I love you!” screamed one fan in my ear as the melée subsided, while others invited us for food and insisted we watch the play-off game with them on the following Wednesday. 

 

Of course, as we learned the following morning, it was far from the generally good-natured scenes we witnessed around al-Nasr City. Algerian fans had been attacked in central Cairo, Egyptian businesses had been torched across Algeria, and the respective governments accused the other of failing to protect its citizens. The game in Khartoum, which we watched from the anaemic distance of a television screen as visas were not forthcoming, amplified the rivalry further, with even fatuous talk of armies being sent to Sudan after more clashes in the streets outside Umm Darman’s stadium. 

 

What it did prove, though, is that football in the Arab World is as central to the lives of its people as Europe and South America. Nothing that can unite and elevate an entire nation of 80 million people in a single moment, or reduce the grown man in front us to a deluge of tears, ought to be described as “just a game”. And as I experienced first-hand, Egypt versus Algeria, especially when a World Cup place is at stake, is perhaps unlike any match on the planet.  

 

For a full version of this article, see NOX41.