NAGOYA, Japan — Ahmed Fathi, a defensive midfielder, ran for his life when he saw thousands of Egyptian opposition supporters streaming toward him on the field. His team, Al Ahly of Cairo, had just lost a local league game in February to Al Masry in the city of Port Said.
Toru Hanai/Reuters
Elsayed Hamdy, center of Egypt's Al Ahly celebrated with teammates after scoring against Japan during their Club World Cup soccer match in Toyota, Japan, in December.
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Al Ahly does not lose often. It is the biggest and most successful soccer club in Egypt, and it claims to have tens of millions of fans worldwide. But the Masry supporters were not celebrating their victory. Something had gone terribly wrong.
“The fans were coming, sprinting after the match,” Fathi, 28, recalled last week. “I knew they hated me and all the players. All the players ran. I didn’t know what was happening outside. But something was happening outside. After this they killed the boys. Not the men, the boys.”
As Fathi and his teammates took refuge from the Masry supporters in a changing room, one of the darkest incidents in soccer history was unfolding in the nearby bleachers.
Within the hour, more than 70 people, many of them Ahly fans and members of the club’s fan group, the Ultras Ahlawy, lay dead.
“One of the fans came to the room and said: ‘You have a problem outside. Someone has been killed.’ And then another has been killed, and another,” he said.
“After this another comes in, and he has a wound.”
Fathi slowly ran a finger from the left side of his temple to his chin, to illustrate the gash to the young man’s face.
It was the bloodiest day in Egypt in the wake of the ouster 22 months ago of President Hosni Mubarak, who ruled for nearly three decades. There were widespread accusations that the military-led government that had replaced Mubarak allowed the violence to escalate to justify its powers and undermine the revolution.
In the aftermath, the soccer league’s season was immediately canceled. Play has yet to resume, and some clubs are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. But Fathi and his teammates have somehow endured and continue to play on. The team dedicated itself to taking part in the most prestigious competition that remained — the tough African Champions League — and vowed to honor those who died by winning it.
And it did. Last month, the Ahly beat Esperance of Tunisia to be crowned champion of Africa, taking a path to the title that meant fending with protests, conspiracy theories and a coup in Mali during a match on the road.
Not only was it the Ahly’s seventh victory in the club competition — making it the most decorated club in African history — but it also meant the team qualified for the Club World Cup in Japan, where the champions of six regional soccer confederations battled it out through last weekend to be crowned the best in the world. Another title, another chance to honor those who had died, was at stake.
The man who had taken the Ahly this far, who had put it back on track after the blood bath, who had gotten through to players who had been scarred by the mayhem they had witnessed, was the 52-year-old coach, Hossam el-Badry.
“The club called me to take charge as head coach, but it was very difficult for me to prepare the players emotionally after Port Said,” Badry said the day before the Ahly was to play the Japanese champion Sanfrecce Hiroshima in the Club World Cup quarterfinal.
The Port Said incident had led several of the players to retire immediately from soccer. Among them was Mohamed Aboutrika, the Ahly’s renowned midfielder and one of the greatest players Africa has produced.
As the fans were being killed in Port Said — some crushed to death in a stampede, others stabbed and beaten by the Masry supporters — Aboutrika was said to have held a fan in his arms as he died on the dressing room floor.
For Badry, the answer to getting his players to focus on soccer again was to convince them that redemption for what had occurred could be found on the field.
“I told them I know it is very difficult to forget that day,” he said. “You have to change this bad moment to make something good for them.”
Egyptian Soccer Team Pushes Through Violence to Honor Fallen Fans
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Egyptian Soccer Team Pushes Through Violence to Honor Fallen Fans
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Egyptian Soccer Team Pushes Through Violence to Honor Fallen Fans
