The great achievement of the Egyptian soccer team makes not only all the Egyptians happy but also all the Arab capitals and the Arab communities in the foreign countries. Although almost the same group of players had achieved the African Cup of Nations 2 years ago in Cairo but this time the happiness was doubled and it crossed the Egyptian borders to all the Arab capitals and the Arab communities in the foreign countries.

There are many reasons for the doubled happiness; first of all Egypt preserved its progress as the most country winning the cup, the second reason is that we won this cup while the tournament was played outside Egypt and the final reason is that there was a malignant campaign before going to Ghana as some experts were suspicious that the national team would be able to compete with the great African teams.

The experts built there evaluations on the weak performance of the Egyptian national team in the qualifications and the performance of the African teams qualified to the tournament especially teams like Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. But once the competition began our National Team defeated Cameroon 4-2 in the opener game thus all the Egyptians felt very confident and optimistic that we will be able to win the cup.

Our players played with Great Spirit and invested all their abilities to defeat all the great African teams. One of our players was named player of the tournament at the Africa Cup of Nations in Ghana and our outstanding goalkeeper was also named the best goalkeeper of the tournament while 5 Egyptian players were chosen among the players in the Confederation of African Football's Best XI.

The important question now is: How was our team able to achieve this historical achievement?

Ibrahim Nafie
Al Ahram
14/2/2008