A sudden crisis marked the showdown between Al Hilal of Sudan and Al Ahly of Egypt in the first leg of the African Champions League group stage in Omdurman, Saturday (Al Kaf), with Al Hilal winning by a clean goal. scored by a fatal mistake by Al-Ahly goalkeeper Muhammad Al-Shennawi, who later saved a penalty that could have doubled Al-Hilal’s scoring. After the match, cameras followed the clash between members of the two teams, during which Al-Shennawi stood out for his tall stature. Statements of what happened varied as the Al-Ahli camp believed that Al-Hilal’s doctor, Awad Osman Al-Jali, was the one who initiated the attack on members of the Al-Ahli group, while the doctor, accused, in The Yalla Koura website reported that two players from Al Ahly attacked him after treating the player Lilibo Maccabi and accused him of working to waste time and his team ahead. He added, “What I did was self-defense and a reaction to what I was exposed to”, noting that the referee of the match was a witness to the incident and that he “dedicated himself only to the tasks of my job”. , which is considered a humanitarian profession in the first place”, referring to the players.
However, other websites have released statements contradicting their attribution of a source in Al-Ahly who said that Al-Hilal’s doctor was the one who attacked Al-Ahly defender Mohamed Abdel-Moneim and hit him with a bottle of local anesthesia. . The source added: “When Al-Shennawi went to talk to him, he also hit him and there is evidence that the judge removed the doctor.” And he continued: “It is strange that Al-Hilal’s doctor did not leave the stadium and was on the bench until the end of the match, so Al-Shennawi approached him after the match and he wanted to know the reason for his behavior, and not conflict with him.” .
Cameras showed that Al-Shennawi engaged in an altercation with some members of Al-Hilal’s technical staff minutes before the end of the match, which continued after the referee’s whistle amid screaming fans.
And according to the Cairo newspaper Al-Shoruk, the Al-Ahly administration, which came second in last year’s edition, expressed a “state of dissatisfaction” with the behavior of its colleague at the Sudanese club Al-Hilal. .
Al-Ahly’s dissatisfaction centered on “statements made by Al-Hilal officials prior to the match that indirectly called into question the good faith of the African Football Confederation’s decision to keep fans out of the match,” said Muhammad Al-Aleki, vice-president of the Sudanese club. . , believes that CAF is working to complement some specific teams on the continent.”
And the Al Ahli administration felt that the Al Hilal officials’ statements heated up the pre-match atmosphere, leading to a state of provocation throughout the match at the stadium, and it came to the point that insults from the main saloon were directed to Al Shoruka, a number of players from the visiting team. While the Sada al-Balad website reported that Al-Ahly would file a formal complaint with the African Union within hours about what had happened.
While the head of the Al-Hilal team, Hisham Hassan Al-Sobat, considered that his team had beaten Al-Ahli by “more than one goal”, and wrote on his Facebook account: “It is true that the goal of victory came to the grid “Al-Shennawi”. But the second goal was against injustice, surveillance, extremism and inequality between clubs.”
Al Sobat added: “Will has done it and justice has been done thanks to the brilliance of our great heroes, the ingenuity of the technical staff who made the match run in the best possible way, the brothers on the board of directors and the football department, and the great Al. Hilal fans who endured the hell of hardship and replaced several bands, but it was just in time and contributed to the victory.”
