Pachuca v Al Ahly: Egypt's continental giants renew quest for worldwide recognition

Cairo club hope to go all the way as they take on Mexican club for a chance to face Real Madrid in Intercontinental Cup final

Al Ahly's Egyptian forward Wessam Abou Ali celebrates with teammates after scoring against UAE's Al Ain in the Intercontinental Cup. AFP

Most of the staff appear distracted at Cairo’s main international airport, as if something else is occupying their minds. Airport workers – and there’s no shortage of people offering their services – look at phones or gather round radios. It’s close to midnight, what is happening?

“Ahly,” smiles a baggage handler when asked what he’s listening to.

That was Al Ahly Sporting Club, Egypt’s biggest and most successful club – indeed Africa’s biggest and most successful – playing in the African Champions League final against Esperance of Tunisia in the first leg earlier in the year.

After a 0-0 first leg draw, the Red Devils prevailed in the second in front of 75,000 in Cairo’s International Stadium a week later to become champions of Africa for the fourth time in five years. They were finalists in the year they didn’t win. No club in world football, not even Real Madrid, can claim such continental hegemony.

“This is what our fans demand of us,” Al Ahly board member Mohamed El Damaty explains to The National. “They never stop dreaming, they don’t like to lose any kind of trophies. In Spain, there might be a season where Madrid are the best team in Europe but Barcelona in La Liga. And that’s enough for both. Al Ahly fans wouldn’t accept that, they want domestic and continental success. This winning mentality is the real push, the real engine for success at the club because when you lose it’s catastrophic and when you win it’s not a big deal.”

It’s a big week for Al Ahly. On Saturday they will play Pachuca in the Intercontinental Cup and the winners of that match take on Real Madrid for a chance to call themselves world champions.

“We are seeking popularity and recognition worldwide with continuous participation in the Club World Cup and the Intercontinental cup,” explains El Damaty. “There are around 80 million Egyptians who support us, over 75 per cent of football fans in our country. We also have Arab fans, fans in different parts of Africa and there are millions of Egyptians around the world. Egypt also has a young demographic, so that works in our favour.”

What constitutes a fan of a football club is open to interpretation. How do you compare a fan who goes to every game home and away with one who has a passing interest on social media? Restrictions on crowds at Egyptian football games skew average attendances and Ahly – the word means national in Arabic – play their home games at three venues, none of which they own. They’re hopeful of building and owning their own stadium in the future, a rarity in Africa.

African giants

But there are some indicators of their size. Al Ahly, for example, boast 17 million fans on Facebook, bigger than Borussia Dortmund’s 15 million but lower than Atletico Madrid’s 19 million. Given the Egyptian domestic league doesn’t enjoy the global prominence of the Bundesliga nor La Liga, it’s significant.

Cairo, the world’s sixth biggest city of 22 million, is a football city and Al Ahly are indisputably its biggest club. Zamalek are huge and the reigning CAF Confederation Cup holders, the secondary competition in Africa, with the Red Devils of Ahly the top dogs, taking on and beating the cream of African football season after season.

Al Ahly have long been giants, but it wasn’t until 2006 that they matched Zamalek’s total of five African Champions Cups.

“As a teen my highlight was winning the Champions League in 2006 against all odds in the second leg,” says supporter Mostafa Omar. “In the 90th minute, a left footed volley from the greatest player of all time – Mohamed Aboutrika – won it for Al Ahly from inside Stade Radiz in Tunisia.”

Al Ahly have now won Africa’s top club competition 12 times. No other team has more than five.

It’s an illustrator of the strength of Egyptian football relative to their neighbours, but even the mighty Al Ahly meet their match on an annual basis. This usually happens in the Fifa Club World Cup for which Ahly keep on qualifying – and keep finishing third. It’s a game that lays bare the relative economic might of Africa against South America’s best teams. Beyond them, the best European team, usually Real Madrid, wait in the final.

Al Ahly will have another go on Saturday with a game against Mexican side Pachuca in Qatar’s Stadium 974 after Pachuca’s surprise 3-0 win against South American champions Botafogo on Wednesday. To get there, Al Ahly defeated Al Ain 3-0 on October 29 at the Cairo International Stadium. That’s a difficult place for any visitor when you have a raucous 75,000-strong wall of redness bearing down on you, the noise far exceeding anything you’ll hear in England’s Premier League.

A tweak to the system means it’s easier to reach the semi-finals.

“If any football fan knows a club outside of Europe and South America then it should be Ahly, that’s our mission,” says El Damaty. “Our dream now is to beat Pachuca and play Real Madrid in the final of the Intercontinental Cup."

Success ensures that Al Ahly play so many cup games – 60 including 18 continental matches last season – that it’s difficult to decipher the Egyptian domestic league since they usually have games in hand. Egyptian teams are allowed to limit domestic games to focus on their continental excellence, leaving a disjointed league table.

In 2024 (the league is one of the few that doesn’t run concurrent with the European leagues), Al Ahly had as many as eight games in hand on opponents. With the Champions League won, they played two games per week and passed all their rivals including Pyramids, a new club in fast-growing New Cairo who are trying to challenge the traditional Ahly-Zamalek duopoly. You can’t blame Pyramids for trying since no club outside Zamalek and Al Ahly have been Egyptian champions since 2002.

“Pyramids is a different model which doesn’t exists in Europe,” says El Damaty diplomatically. “They spend a lot without a significant fanbase. They are a strong and respectable team.”

In football’s ever-changing schedule, Al Ahly were recently awarded the title of African-Asian-Pacific Cup winners after that Al Ain triumph. Another change comes next year with the new Fifa Club World Cup which will be played across 11 cities of the United States in June. Al Ahly are there as African champions three times over in the qualifying period, where they’ll be joined by three other African sides they usually beat along the way. Al Ahly have a higher continental ranking than any other team in the world and they’ll be in a group with Palmeiras, Porto and Inter Miami.

On the field, Al Ahly are traditionally seen as the team of the working class, as opposed to the royalists of their main rivals Zamalek – the name of the wealthy Nile island where both clubs have their headquarters.

Al Ahly were the first club to play only Egyptians at a time when the British ruled in the country. Their fans, including Ultras Ahlawy who arrange vast tifo displays, sing dismissively about Zamalek being the club of foreigners. Al Ahly’s team is still strongly Egyptian, with many of them internationals for one of Africa’s strongest national sides. Mohamed El Shenaway, 35, is Ahly’s goalkeeper and captain; defender Ramy Rabia is vice-captain. Amr El Solia another team captain. Emam Ashour is a key midfielder, Mohamed Magdy Afsha another star.

But non-Egyptians are also important. Palestinian striker Wessam Abou Ali was the top scorer last season. South African forward Percy Tau and Tunisian defender Ali Maaloul are examples of how Al Ahly can buy players from the biggest rivals in Africa. Their challenge is then keeping hold of those players against advances from wealthier European teams.

Like Mohamed Abdelmonem, who is Nice’s central defender in Ligue 1 and Hamdy Fathy, who plays in Qatar. But Al Ahly still pay well enough to keep almost all their top talents, though several are the wrong side of 30.

The team is coached by Swiss veteran Marcel Koller, 64, who previously managed mostly in Switzerland and Austria.

“He’s doing great, he’s won the Champions League a couple of times,” says board member El Damaty. “He’s very well organised and I think he’s happy being here, with the atmosphere and the ambitions of the club and he’s got a team with a good bunch of players and we’re better as a team than individuals.”

Atmosphere is always a factor. Like in 2020, when Al Ahly and Zamalek met in the Champions League final. The problem was that that the game was set to be played behind closed doors because of the pandemic. Each club was allowed only 1,000 fans in to cheer them on.

“I was lucky enough to go to the game,” says Mustafa. “I made 56 phone calls to try and get a ticket, using all my connections. A friend had an executive box so I attended and to this day this is my greatest football memory ever, winning against Zamalek in Cairo stadium with a rocket out of the blue in the 85th minute and 45 seconds. This day will forever be engraved in my memory and heart.”

Challenges remain

The pandemic is over but fans attending games remains an issue.

“This is our main challenge,” agrees El Damaty. “We need our fans at all our matches. The second challenge for Ahly is economic. Our aims and ambitions are big so we need big funds to achieve the dreams and that’s not easy given the economic situation in Egypt. We’ve had a devaluation of our currency in the last two years which makes it more difficult. It’s tough, but I love the mentality of the fans because I am one of them – and we knew exactly what the fans wanted when we applied to become board members.”

Elections are held every four years, with al Ahly’s 200,000 paid-up members voting for 12 board members. The men’s football team is the most popular part of the club, but Al Ahly compete in 15 other sports to the highest level across Africa. It’s a sporting institution, a flagbearer for Egypt.

There are other issues for Al Ahly and Egyptian football. The popularity of England’s Premier League means some young Egyptians stay at home to watch games. In Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah, there’s an inspirational Egyptian hero who is performing at the very top.

For most, it’s Al Ahly which stir the greatest emotions.

“Al Ahly has been my whole life, memories of me with my father and my uncle, who passed away, and watched games with him, it’s going to the games with my mates since I was 11-12 years old,” explains Mostafa.

“Al Ahly is the ultras family when I joined in 2008 and I knew the true definition of fan culture and support. It’s very cliched, but Al Ahly taught me all about life and that there’s nothing impossible: winning against all odds and achieving the impossible. Al Ahly is my family, through the years Al Ahly has and will forever be my family. Al Ahly taught me values and that I should always aim for excellence and that I should never settle for less. It’s a never-ending relationship of love and unconditional support.”

Painful past

The club have been through incredible lows as well. Al Ahly were the visiting team during the Port Said Stadium disaster when 74 football fans were killed in 2012 and which shut down Egyptian football for the remainder of the season, stopping fans from going to games for three years. Authorities are still nervous about letting clubs play in capacity stadiums;. ticket sales are strict. When The National visited Cairo, we had to show a passport before being issued with an ID card and a match ticket.

Disasters can be reduced to historical footnotes of facts and figures, the human cost pushed aside. But it doesn’t disappear.

“Al Ahly fans were killed in Port Said in 2012,” says supporter Mostafa. “I lost 12 friends in that game and it still haunts me until today as I was going to go to this game but never made it. Sometimes I think what would’ve happened to me if I went, that was literally the only game I missed all season. May their souls rest in peace and I hope they’re in a better place. I love them so much.”

Port Said was not a one-off in Egyptian football history either. In 1966, a riot at the derby between Zamalek and Al Ahly saw 300 injuries when the military took control of the stadium. In 1974, a wall collapsed during a Zamalek friendly against Dukla Prague, killing 49. In 2015, 20 football fans died in a confrontation with police at the gates of the 30 June Stadium during a game between Zamalek and ENPPI. That came just a week after fans were officially allowed back into stadiums for domestic games after the Port Said disaster. Many lost heart in Egyptian football after the double disasters.