Egypt and Algeria fight for Africa’s last ticket

Egypt and Algeria will return to the pitch later today in Sudan to settle the last of Africa’s qualifying bets for the FIFA 2010 World Cup after a dramatic late goal gave the Pharaohs a 2-0 win last Saturday.

Very few games since the qualifiers for South Africa 2010 commenced over two years ago generated as much tension as that encounter at Cairo’s International Stadium where Emad Moteab’s header five minutes into stoppage time gave the home side the winning margin they needed over the visitors to force a sudden-death play-off.

Egypt’s victory in that match left the two teams tied on 13 points with the same goal difference.

Bad blood

The last time Egypt qualified for the World Cup, the 1990 tournament in Italy, they did it at the expense of Algeria. But there was a lot of bad blood between both sides in that encounter played in Cairo back in 1989 with riots breaking out after the encounter.

Lakhdar Belloumi, one of the best players to have ever played for the Desert Foxes, was tried in absentia and sentenced to prison in Egypt for allegedly seriously injuring the Egyptian team doctor with a bottle after that tense encounter.

There were no stabbing incidents involving any player on either side at the end of last Saturday’s encounter, but there were violent incidents after the game, particularly in Marseille, France where Algerian fans and French police clashed.

Violence also erupted in the days leading up to last Saturday’s match as Egyptian fans pelted the Algerian team bus with stones when it arrived in Cairo on Thursday, injuring several players and staff. Algerian fans were also hurt after the match, leading to reprisal attacks by Algerians on Egyptian companies based in Algiers on Monday. And there’s a distinct possibility that there will be more “payback time” today as both sides get to meet before, during or after the match at the Al-Merreikh Stadium.

Mobilisation

There was a mad rush to get flights and tickets for the match back in Algeria after the authorities mobilised planes and offered discounted tickets for fans to come and watch today’s match.

The Egyptians also did likewise with thousands of them arriving Khartoum by air and by bus to join the thousands who already reside and work in the Sudanese capital that has not seen such a huge turnout of fans since it staged the African Nations Cup in 1970.

Even hotels in Khartoum have been fully booked by Tuesday, a situation which forced local authorities to set up two separate sites for each camp of supporters, several kilometres apart, in order to avoid a recurrence of the violence that has erupted in recent days.

A report on AFP also has it that around 15,000 police officers have been placed on standby in case things boil over before, during and after the game.

The match venue, the Al-Merreikh Stadium, seats 41,000, but the authorities have limited the number of tickets for the match to 35,000 spectators for safety reasons, with about 9,000 seats reserved for the rival fans at opposite ends of the arena.