Thirty-One Nil

by James Montague

  Scepticism and optimism surround Tahrir Square. The walls around it are covered in graffiti denouncing SCAF, the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces – led by Field Marshal Tantawi – which now rules Egypt. The words on the walls in Arabic and English denounce the police and the army, America and Israel. Syria, too. One wall has a stencil image, repeated dozens of times, of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a Hitler moustache and side parting superimposed on his features. A tent has been set up on a patch of ground nearby highlighting the war currently raging in Syria, a gruesome exhibition of photographs showing the corpses of dismembered women and children alongside cartoons decrying the world’s inaction.

  One flag, though, is flying more than any other, even more than the Egyptian flag. It is red, with a shield and an eagle; the flag of Al Ahly Football Club. Cairo, Egypt and Africa’s most popular team has become an integral part of this revolution. At least, their supporters have. The Ahlawy, the team’s ultras group, had long been an anti-authoritarian irritant to the police when Mubarak was in power. During the revolution they had played an instrumental role in Tahrir Square, an army 15,000-strong that swung the balance when the activists and the Muslim Brotherhood fought the police during those famous battles a year earlier. Their flags and their songs had become revolutionary flags and revolutionary songs. I had watched smaller protests break out around the square. It was the Ahlawy with their flares and organised chaos that had formed the nucleus of the protests.

  They had made their sacrifices, too. A few weeks earlier a football match took place between Al Ahly and Al Masry in the Suez city of Port Said. Al Masry had sprung a surprise, unexpectedly winning 3-1. At the final whistle Al Masry’s fans had stormed the pitch and attacked the thousands of Ahlawy who had travelled for the match. The sole exit out of the stand had been locked, the floodlights turned off. When they were turned on again, seventy-two Al Ahly fans were dead. The incident had raised many questions. Why had the gates been locked? Why were the floodlights cut? Why did so many young men die? The Ahlawy blamed the police and the army, payback time for their role in defeating the state in Tahrir Square. I had spent the past few days with them as they marched in their tens of thousands in Cairo and Alexandria, demanding justice and commemorating their fallen comrades.

  Bob Bradley had been there, too, at one of the marches, showing his respect for the dead. A few miles out of town, in a smart hotel far from the anarchy of central Cairo, the coach of the Egyptian national team is trying to piece that team back together. He is easy to pick out in the lobby, the one man in a room who always looks as if he’s waiting impatiently for a train to take him somewhere else. ‘All the skills you have tried to hone over the years,’ he says as we sit down. ‘This is a test of all of them.’

  Bradley speaks with measured intensity, chewing over every sentence before he delivers it. He hadn’t expected an easy ride in charge of the Pharaohs. He has been in the job for six months now, having been let go by the US national team despite qualifying for the 2010 World Cup, where they reached the knockout stages, making it to the final of the 2009 Confederations Cup and winning a Gold Cup, too. He’d been hired in Egypt’s post-revolutionary squall, where football was just another battlefront for the revolution. The league had been postponed because of the instability, and then suspended due to violence, thanks largely to the security vacuum, and then restarted. Olympic qualification had been cancelled too. When Bradley arrived the league had just been suspended again. He had been in the job for six months now and not yet taken charge of a competitive match. His first, a friendly against Brazil in Qatar’s capital Doha, ended in a 2-0 defeat, but he saw enough in the squad to realise that the team could go far. ‘I knew they had a group of players that had been the nucleus that won the Africa Cup of Nations in ’06, ’08 and 2010, and that [previous coach] Hassan Shehata was a good man,’ he says when I ask what he knew of Egyptian football before he got here. Bradley had met Egypt’s previous coach when the US played them at the 2009 Confederations Cup. Shehata had been Egypt’s most successful coach, winning three Africa Cup of Nations in a row. But he had been seen as being too close to Mubarak and the previous regime and had to go. ‘The way they thought of it in Egypt, this was their golden generation,’ he says. ‘I ended up coming here, speaking to the people. The bottom line is you’re now trying to size up the situation from a football perspective, building a new team. The dream is the World Cup in 2014. But obviously there’s a lot more to it.’

  A lot more to it. The US had planned a friendly against Egypt in Cairo two weeks after the January revolution. It was cancelled and Bradley watched the revolution on TV from afar, not knowing that a few months later he would be sacked by the US team before heading to Egypt himself. He adapted well to the chaos of Cairo and settled down to life in Africa’s largest city. Most of the city’s wealthy abandon central Cairo the first moment they can, to escape the gridlock and the pollution. Bradley was different. He and his wife moved into an apartment on Zamalek, an island on the Nile, in the heart of the city. He walked around the streets speaking to fans who begged him to play Mohamed Aboutrika, Egypt’s legendary forward who was a hero to millions across the world because of his piousness and desire to stand up for the poor and disenfranchised. Bradley tried to blend in – as much as a white, bald American with piercing blue eyes could blend in. He read, asked questions, tried to understand. ‘When I took the job it coincided with some of the protests that turned violent,’ he recalls. ‘I’m one that asks questions. I asked: who goes to Tahrir Square? Is there a real agenda? Are there people there planted by others to create problems? You start to recognise the different levels of each situation. You also get a real sense how football is part of all this revolution. Clearly the football and politics in different ways are totally connected.’

  He would soon see how closely linked the two were. On 1 February 2012, a few weeks earlier than our meeting, Bradley was travelling to the Cairo International Stadium to watch the second half of Zamalek, the other half of Cairo’s footballing duopoly, and Ismaily play in the Egyptian league. The league had started again after a forty-day suspension. ‘That day Masry and Ahly was in Port Said but it’s a couple of hours away,’ he says. ‘Some people told us that there might be some trouble at the game. But let’s get it clear. We heard the fans didn’t get on. We watched the first half on TV. It was a competitive game. Before we left there were a few things that were concerning. Fans running on the field, fireworks. We went to the Cairo Stadium and there’s a TV in the lobby area. We see the third Masry goal and the whistle and see fans running on the field, and the Ahly players sprinting off the field.’

  It was in the next fifteen minutes that the young supporters of Al Ahly were killed. Eyewitness reports and medical records show that the majority had been crushed to death in a tiny exit tunnel under the stadium. The door had been locked. One supporter had left early to use the bathroom. When he returned the gates were shut fast and his friends crushed on the other side. He tried to break the lock with a stone, but the gate collapsed on him. He was the first to die. Others had been stabbed to death or thrown off the top of the stands on to the concrete below. As news of the tragedy filtered through, Zamalek fans began setting fire to the stadium. Bradley quickly left. ‘By the time we go into the federation it’s clear that this was not a typical case of fan violence,’ he says. ‘There was one incredible question and answer on Egyptian TV with the captain of Masry. He didn’t play but talked about what they saw. He says something to the [Masry] supporters and the supporters didn’t recognise him and he’s thinking: “these aren’t our supporters”.’

  The Port Said massacre stunk. The police and the army were nowhere to be seen. The gates had been locked and no effort was made to prevent the Al Masry fans attacking Ahly’s supporters or the players, who fled to the dressing room where the dead and dying were being brought. ‘You know the story?’ Bradley asks. I didn’t. ‘Here’s a young fan in a locker room. The fan says to Aboutrika: “Captain,
I always wanted to meet you.”’ The fan died in Aboutrika’s arms. In the immediate aftermath of the match, Aboutrika and several other Al Ahly players retired from football. SCAF blamed football hooliganism for the deaths, but no one was buying that. For Bradley the tragedy meant two things. ‘First and foremost our thoughts and prayers are with the young people who lost their lives,’ he says, looking at his hands as he speaks. ‘Young people who, in a group as the ultras, played a big role in the revolution. To think young, talented, intelligent people lose their lives at a football match blows you away. You think of the people who were in the stadium that night.’

  Secondly, it also meant he didn’t have a national team to coach. The up and coming Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against the Central African Republic, which was to be his first competitive match in charge of Egypt, was cancelled. He was at this five-star resort, not out of choice, but because the training camp for the game was due to take place there. Bradley decided to gather what players he could anyway. But the players of Al Ahly made up the vast majority of the national team: perhaps eight or nine in any starting eleven. They were emotionally shattered by Port Said and the bloodshed they had witnessed first-hand. And, besides, no one knew whether Mohamed Aboutrika and the others would ever choose to return. ‘I spoke to them and at this moment those players need time,’ Bradley says. ‘Right now we have left them and little by little we will find the right time and the right way.’

  In the aftermath of Port Said the league was cancelled and the Egyptian FA resigned. There would be no football in Egypt for a while. Yet, in the weeks that followed, the Ahlawy took to the streets. They protested in Tahrir Square. Their numbers and their legend grew rather than diminished because of Port Said. Bradley and his wife, Lindsay, joined them on the streets, marching alongside the Ahlawy in a rally to Sphinx Square. ‘We would go to Sphinx Square as a sign of respect for those who lost their lives and a sign of respect for the families,’ he recalls. ‘In a moment like that I think it’s important you are with the people. It was a simple sign of respect and a simple sign of being with football people, knowing this was a senseless tragedy in a country that is trying so hard to move on and a country we have grown to love.’

  The fallout from Port Said would last longer than anyone could have predicted. SCAF’s original explanation for the tragedy – mindless violence – was rejected by the Egyptian public. There was too much evidence, too many suspicious circumstances and coincidences. The Ahlawy believed they had been punished for their role in the revolution. The fans of Al Ahly had fought the police in the four years before January 2011, fought them on the barricades in Tahrir Square and, now, vowed to protest and prevent the league from restarting until they got justice for those who had died. Bradley, too, believed that Port Said was more than just fan violence. ‘People are protesting because they want the handover to civilian rule to move faster,’ he says of his time speaking to people on the streets during those marches. ‘And then something happens in Port Said and now there are camera reports that the gates are welded shut. One of the first things you see is the police doing nothing. When I ask opinions of people, they say the military in their own way is trying to say: “Fine. You want us out so this is what it is going to be like without us.”’ We’ve been talking for over an hour now, and he is no closer to an answer. ‘There’s been a number of protests that have turned violent since the revolution and if Port Said is part of bringing about this change then I think it will prove even more that this was not just fan violence,’ he says. ‘The flipside is I don’t think you can come here and be the national team coach and be oblivious to all this, have your head in the sand when you have players and a team that are so deeply involved in all these things.’

  The team. Bradley was here to build a team. Now, because of the revolution and because of Port Said, he had a much more important role to play. To pick up the pieces and build a team that wouldn’t just make it to the World Cup finals in Brazil, but could show a divided country a positive reflection of itself. ‘A national team, to be successful anywhere, has a connection to the people. Now more than ever here,’ he says. ‘Everyone has a dream for the World Cup. So that responsibility, what it means when we step on the field, is making sure that we’re representing what these people are all about.’ The World Cup, Bradley hopes, will be his own small contribution to the revolution. ‘Everyone you talk to says: “we must go to the World Cup,”’ he explains. It is time to go. It is late. Bradley is taking a training session early in the morning and I have to catch a bus back to central Cairo. We shake hands. No one knows when football will return to Egypt, nor whether the price of watching those young men die in Port Said will be too much for Al Ahly’s players to pay. Maybe it will be too much for Bradley as well.

  It is another four months before Egypt are due to play their first 2014 World Cup qualifier against Mozambique. Egypt have been drawn in a group alongside Guinea and Zimbabwe. The winner of the group will then contest a two-leg play-off against one of the other group winners. African qualification is long and gruelling. Transport infrastructure is non-existent between some countries. The distance and heat of central and southern Africa are a problem, as are the poor facilities, food and water. It is a long way from New Jersey, Bradley’s home, and a long way from the world-class facilities that the US men’s national team is used to. Back then Bradley had a well-oiled organisation behind him, engineering marquee friendlies against the world’s best. Now he is arranging his own matches anywhere he can, calling in favours and trying to give his players some kind of practice. He has arranged two friendlies, one in Lebanon and the other in Sudan. With the league cancelled it is the only football any of his team can get.

  The Mozambique game is due to be played in Cairo but that is unlikely given the instability. Will Bradley last that long? Anything can happen between now and then. A presidential election had been planned, coincidently at the same time as the Mozambique game. Egypt might go up in flames. ‘When you’re a leader in any way, when there’s a tragedy, how you react, respond, this is important,’ Bradley says as we part. ‘We are trying in a small way to help the Egyptian people. When we are with the national team we set an example.’ I ask him, finally, how he would like to be remembered when his time in charge of the Pharaohs comes to an end. ‘That we qualified for the World Cup in 2014, Inshallah,’ Bradley replies. ‘That would fit in such a significant and important way with everything that has gone on. It’s what the people talk about. It’s what they dream about.’

  I take the bus back to Cairo, past the rows of trucks full of armed soldiers, past the graffiti-covered walls denouncing the military, past the groups of dozens of small, bickering protesters and back to Tahrir Square, and the flagsellers, where the Al Ahly eagle and shield is flying highest. The World Cup seems very far away.

  **

  Alexandria, Egypt. June 2012.

  The Borg el Arab is a white elephant. It is Egypt’s biggest stadium, isolated in the desert on the outskirts of the northern port city of Alexandria. As many as 86,000 fans could come and watch a match here, as they did when the 2009 Under 20s World Cup was hosted by Egypt. The Egyptian army’s stadium had been built especially for the occasion. Inside, the stadium is still immaculate, with a running track around the pitch. High up in the main stand is a large viewing platform, a huge, bulletproof glass box built especially for Hosni Mubarak and his wife, Suzanne, so that they could watch the opening game of the tournament without fear of assassination. No football has taken place here since then, yet the stadium has been dutifully maintained by the army. The grass is cut and watered regularly and the seats swept of dust and sand from the desert storms that pass over it. But a match is at last due to take place here in a few days’ time. Egypt is about to play Mozambique in its first 2014 World Cup qualifier. It is four months since I met Bob Bradley in Cairo. He is still in his job and is finally about to set out on the long road to Brazil.

  Egypt remains in a state of chaos and the match has been
moved from Cairo to the Borg el Arab Stadium in Alexandria. Not because it is the biggest, or the best, or to give the maximum number of fans the chance to see their heroes in a country where the league is still suspended after Port Said. All the supporters have been banned from attending any home games, which is just as well. FIFA had also punished Egypt for a series of security lapses during the last World Cup campaign. The match is also taking place during Egypt’s first free and fair presidential elections in the country’s long history. A field of revolutionaries, religious figures and former regime politicians ran in the first round, with the top two qualifying for a run-off a few weeks later. Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood – the Islamist organisation banned by Mubarak for fear that it would destabilise the country with its fundamentalism – won the most votes. He would stand against Ahmed Shafiq, a military figure who had served in Mubarak’s government but who was running on a law, order and security platform.

  The Mozambique game is being played slap-bang in the middle of the first and second round of voting. Given that the league remains cancelled, and that the ultras of Al Ahly, the Ahlawy, are still a potent protest force on the streets, it was decided that the match should be moved to Alexandria. An empty Borg el Arab suits everyone, it seems, except the fans, the players and Bob Bradley. At a nearby hotel, the only building anywhere near the stadium, Bob Bradley is waiting finally to take charge of his first competitive match with his Egypt team. It is almost ten months since his appointment. The hotel is so isolated I’ve had to flag down a passing truck and beg a lift. ‘It has been incredibly difficult to find the right way to think about Port Said,’ Bradley says after we greet each other. ‘Playing for the national team is a bigger responsibility than ever now. The memory of the tragedy is being carried with some of them in a strong, positive way. In other cases, those terrible memories are still nightmares. The idea of getting to a World Cup now burns inside all of them.’