Egypt - Africa's great mystery

For me one of Africa's great footballing mysteries involves Egypt. Not the club game, which has been home to the giants of the African game Al-Ahly, but the national team. The national team has certainly provided success down the years be it winning African titles or supplying decent players who have gone on to forge decent careers in Europe. As mentioned the domestic game has been home to multiple champions league winners Al-Ahly while their great rivals Zamalek reached this year's final losing out to Mamelodi Sundowns.

The great mystery for me is how this nation has not had more world cup appearances. To date Egypt has only two world cup qualifications (1934 and 1990) with no win registered, although they did manage to cling onto a draw with Ireland in 1990. Most nations will have lulls in fortunes with periods in the footballing doldrums but Egypt really do defy this. They have been African champions a record seven times which includes the dominant era of 2006-2010 where they won the African title three times running. Yet they failed to qualify for either of the world cups in 2006 or 2010. How can such a power consistently fail to qualify for the world's showpiece event?

I'm sure Egyptian fans won't want reminding that Togo and Angola have had more recent appearances in the world cup. It's not like Egypt have lacked the talent. The likes of Mido, Amr Zaki, Hossam Ghaly and Ahmed Hassan had been part of those failed world cup attempts.

However after failing to capitalise upon that dominance the team did plunder into the doldrums. They weren't even qualifying for the African nations cup. In fact, up until this campaign they hadn't qualified since their 2010 title victory. They make their return next month in Gabon but looking slightly ahead they are also on the right path to their third world cup.
Granted it's only two games into the final stage but Egypt lead their group containing Ghana, Congo and Uganda. The group winner qualifies for Russia and Egypt have two wins from two.
These days Egypt can call upon the sheer pace of Roma's Mohammed Salah, the industry of Hull City's El-Mohamedy and Arsenal's holder in midfield El-Neny. Koka at Braga is a decent striker to have as well. Best of all though is having a Trezeguet to call upon, always useful even if it's not David.

November's home win over Ghana has got fans believing that the world cup absences will be ended soon. The return game will be huge and being the final game in the group it's shaping up to be the biggest fixture in years for the nation, in a world cup sense.

In fact the last big world cup fixture was the tie-breaking play-off for the 2010 edition. A dramatic 2-0 win over Algeria meant both countries ended the group with identical records in points and head-to-head. The play-off in Sudan saw Algeria edge through 1-0 to condemn Egypt to more hurt, despite being the three-in-a-row continental champions.

So Russia 2018, will Egypt be there? It will be worth tuning into this to see if Africa's great mystery can be solved.