Al-Ahly and Zamalek go from a competitive peak to facing negative crises

No one would have imagined that interest, passion and excitement would be transformed into the summit confrontations between the two poles of Egyptian football, Al-Ahly and…Zamalekto a series of crises that do not stop with each new season. From watching beautiful goals, magical touches, fierce competition and the struggle for the title, to silent angry anticipation of the position and fate of the summit, until it was confirmed that it would not be held due to the refusal of the Zamalek Club, whose demands regarding the “principle of equal opportunities” were not met.

There was no talk for 72 hours before the upcoming summit meeting between Al-Ahly and Zamalek clubs, which was scheduled for June 25, in the 27th round of the tournament. Egyptian League For the 2023-2024 season, Zamalek club met the four demands in order to compete in the summit, until the matter ended with Zamalek officially announcing that it would not play the match. The summit matches between Al-Ahly and Zamalek turned from a classic for Egyptian football into a confrontation of crises due to the many negative events related to them.

The Zamalek club announced, through an official statement, that it would not play the summit match, and it said: “The club’s management confirms that it knows very well that the great Zamalek fans always love the moments when the football team plays, and they also know that fair competition has been its slogan for more than a century.” However, compelling circumstances prevent her from doing so in a league match, due to the absence of the principle of equal opportunities established by the rules and principles of football.” Zamalek Club detonated a bomb a few days before the summit match, when it issued a statement confirming its refusal to play the summit match with Al-Ahly, as well as all the upcoming matches in the second round of the local league, before the postponed matches from the first round were completed.

Zamalek set a set of demands to resume its matches, which included announcing an investigation into the errors of the referee of the match between Zamalek and Al-Masry, amending the tournament schedule, and following up on the postponed matches first, in addition to forming a neutral committee to manage the competition away from the Professional Clubs Association, due to the presence of facilities obtained by Al-Ahly from the Association of Professional Clubs. Clubs in order of their matches. The last hours witnessed attempts to reconcile with the Zamalek administration, led by the Minister of Youth and Sports, Dr. Ashraf Sobhi, in an attempt to persuade Zamalek to retract the decision to play the match, in the presence of Ahmed Diab, president of the association.

In recent years, the summit matches witnessed widespread controversy in many events. No one forgets the incident of Al-Ahly announcing not to complete the local league championship, and temporarily freezing its matches in 2019, in objection to the decision to postpone the summit match with Zamalek, and Al-Ahly’s refusal to play its match with El Gouna, before… The Ministry of Youth and Sports intervenes to contain the situation with a meeting with Al-Ahly officials, and it is confirmed that the postponement was for security reasons, so that Al-Ahly returns to complete the matches of the 2019-2020 season, but the summit was postponed.

The Al-Ahly and Zamalek summit in 2020 was not played in the local league, due to Zamalek’s request to postpone the match, but his request was rejected by the Football Association, so Zamalek surprised everyone with a strange scene on a rainy night, when it announced that the summit match would be played with its players from the youth team, who had been moving on the bus for more than Three hours in the streets of Cairo, then they announced that they would not reach Cairo Stadium, due to bad weather conditions, and the Football Association came out to announce that Al-Ahly was the winner, while imposing penalties on Zamalek, which was considered to have withdrawn.

The date that was scheduled for the summit meeting between Al-Ahly and Zamalek coincides with exactly 28 years since the canceled Al-Ahly and Zamalek summit in 1996, known in the media and the public as the summit of referee Kadri Abdel Azim, as the summit match between Al-Ahly and Zamalek was not completed on June 25, 1996 in the second round of the league. Al-Masry minutes before its end, after Zamalek withdrew in objection to Hossam Hassan’s goal, which Al-Ahly advanced with two goals without a response. The crisis at that time caused the dismissal of the Football Association’s Board of Directors, headed by Major General Harb Al-Dahshouri, in addition to the dissolution of the Board of Directors of the Zamalek Club that made the decision to withdraw, headed by the late Counselor Jalal. Ibrahim, and at that time Al-Ahly was crowned champion of the league, while the summit of the two teams in 1999 was canceled five minutes after the French referee Bata’s whistle, after the expulsion of Zamalek player Ayman Abdel Aziz.