The football league title is knocking the Red Devils’ doors

Winning the league title this season would be the perfect end of a perfect season for powerhouse Al-Ahli, widely known as the Red Devils. The crowning, in fact, will put the icing on the cake to give the ideal celebration of the club’s centenary. Lifting the league trophy will mark the 100th championship to be won by the club in 100 years. And it’s easy as pie.
Having garnered 66 points out of 25 games, Al-Ahli has to collect only three points out of the coming five matches to secure its fifth consecutive league title, for the Devils are 12 points ahead of the second-of-the-table Ismaili. And although Al-Ahli stumbled in Mehallah in the 24th Week – drawing 0-0 – they soon regained their shape in the 25th stage as it edged the oil company team ENPPI 2-0. The last game witnessed the comeback of Al-Ahli’s star midfielder Mohamed Abu Treika, who has been absent for two months.
With the competition for the league title almost settled, two of the club’s strikers are still competing for the top-scorers title. Flavio Amado and Emad Miteb have scored together 33 goals out of the 57 scored by the team in the past 25 matches. Flavio has netted the ball 17 times, while his teammate Miteb has scored 16 goals.
However, Al-Ahli fans hope that their team give a good performance when they meet Barcelona in celebration of the club’s centenary anniversary. A win over the Catalonian team and European Champions League title holders would put the finishing touches on yet another success story that will go down in the chronicles of Egyptian football history, as it did in 2001 when it beat Real Madrid 1-0 in Cairo.
The situation of the second-of-the-table Ismaili has not changed since last month. The team, which lies in the second place with 54 points, has missed a chance to narrow the point difference with the table leader Al-Ahli when they surprisingly lost 2-1 to bottom-of-the-table Tanta by the end of last month at a time when Al-Ahli drew with Mehalla. It was the third defeat the team was dealt this season, and it was the most humiliating as well.
Two consecutive victories over the Coastal Guards (4-2) and the Arab Contractors (1-0) couldn’t help the team in its competition with Al-Ahli. Exiting from the Arab Champions League and standing on the verge of paying farewell to the African Confederations Cup – after beating Green Buffalos of Zambia 2-1 in the first leg in Ismailia — might cost the chairman of the board Yehya El-Koumi and the French coach Patrice Neveu their posts.
The only gain the team might achieve this season is finishing second after Al-Ahli, so that it can take part in the African Champions League next year. And even this hope might be dashed if Zamalek manages to come back on track in the remaining five matches. Zamalek, which comes third in the table with 52 points and one postponed match in hand, will exert the utmost effort to finish second so that it can make up for the surprising, yet humiliating, exit from the semi-final phase of the Arab Champions League after losing to the Faisali of Jordan 2-1 in Cairo. The Arab Champions League title should have served as a solace for the White team fans after being knocked out from the African Champions League competitions by Al-Hilal of Sudan last month. But, it seems, the team’s supporters are doomed to suffer at the hands of their players. The Ismaili-Zamalek encounter scheduled to take place on 26 April will be the decider on who will take part in the African Champions League and the African Confederation Cup next year.
As for the oil teams, business was as usual. ENPPI remained in sixth place with 33 points, despite having been dealt a 2-0 defeat at the hands of the incumbent title winner Al-Ahli. A 1-0 victory over Ittihad of Alexandria maintained the team’s relatively advanced position on the table.
The same goes for Petrojet, which has occupied the eighth place during the past weeks. By collecting 32 points up till the 25th Week, the team has secured a berth in next year’s national league competitions.

With the competitions coming closer to an end, it has become crystal clear that the third oil team Assiut Petroleum will pay farewell to the premier league. With only five matches remaining, the team garnered only 19 points that made it lag behind in fifteenth place. The team, which depends mainly on inexperienced players, tried to leave a mark by drawing with Cairene Zamalek in the 25th week, but it was in vain as it was defeated 4-3.

By Mohamed El-Sayed