By rehiring Portuguese coach Jesualdo Ferreira, Zamalek seek to recapture the form that won the double for them in 2015.
Ferreira takes over from the Frenchman Patrice Carteron who faltered badly in the Egyptian League and African Champions League.
Ferreira, who has reportedly signed an 18-month contract with Zamalek, can make an immediate impact when his old club host Morocco’s Wydad in a key Champions League clash in Cairo on Friday 11 March.
Zamalek lost 3-1 to Wydad in Morocco’s Stade Mohamed V in the first leg.
The defeat left Zamalek third in Group D with only two points from three games, four behind Wydad and five adrift of leaders Petro Atletico of Angola.
To stand any chance of making it to the last eight and avoiding a second successive group stage elimination, Zamalek, five-time winners of the tournament but the last of which was in 2002, will need to beat Wydad tomorrow.
In a way, it will be as if Ferreira, who is now 75, never left. He returns with Zamalek the champions of the Egyptian League, just the way they were when he left them seven years ago.
When Ferreira left, Mortada Mansour was Zamalek’s president. He returns to find Mansour still president. However, in the interim, Mansour was suspended from the presidency over financial wrongdoing in the club before staging an election comeback just last month.
There was bad blood between Ferreira and Mansour even though the Portuguese led Zamalek to the domestic league title in 2015 - the first time in 11 years- then added the icing on the cake, completing Zamalek’s first double since 1988 with a win over arch-rivals Ahly in the Egypt Cup final.
But Ferreira left that same year, unable to cope with Mansour’s constant interference in his work – the same complaint aired by at least half a dozen former Zamalek coaches - and the club failing to pay its arrears.
It will be a fascinating watch whether they have made peace or whether sparks will fly once again in Mit Okba.
The day after the Zamalek fixture, Ahly will meet Mamelodi Sundowns of South Africa away from home after getting back on track in the Champions League.
Defender Mustafa Karshom’s own goal 14 minutes from time spared holders Ahly blushes as red as their jerseys, as they came off 3-2 winners at home over Sudan’s Al Merrikh for their first Group A victory.
Al Merrikh bounced back from 2-0 to tie the game, but Ahly midfielder Amr Al-Sulaya’s deflection off of Karshom proved the winner.
The victory took Ahly, the defending champions and record 10-time winner of the Champions League, to second in Group A with four points from three games and three games left, three behind leaders Sundowns which surprisingly beat Ahly 1-0 in Cairo.
Under South African coach Pitso Mosimane, Ahly are also in fine form in the Egyptian League as they try to retake the title they lost to Zamalek last season. At the time of writing, Pyramids were in the lead with 26 points from 10 games. In hot pursuit are Ahly, a point behind but with a game in hand.
Smouha of Alexandria are third with 22 points after 11 games, followed by Zamalek, tied with Smouha but having played 10 matches.
Mosimane will be pleased with the revival of Ahly striker Mohamed Sherif whose brace against Al Merrikh started the ball rolling for his club. Sherif, the league’s top scorer last season with 21 goals, seems to have regained some of his sharpness in front of goal, as attested by his opener against the Sudan outfit, scoring from a seemingly impossible angle.
Sherif’s resurgence after a spell of poor marksmanship will also be welcome news for Egypt’s coach Carlos Queiroz who desperately needs a hot forward before the start of the pivotal two-legged, home and away fixtures against Senegal that will determine who will go to Qatar for this year’s World Cup.
Queiroz, who steered Egypt to the final of last month’s Africa Cup of Nations before losing to Senegal, has virtually staked his reputation that Egypt will beat Senegal to the World Cup.
The revised first qualifier is in Cairo on Friday 25 March while the return leg is in Stade Olympique de Diamniadio Stadium in Dakar on Tuesday 29 March.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 10 March, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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