As the referee’s whistle ended last Sunday’s football game between Egypt and Cameroon, the Pharaohs secured a record-breaking sixth title with a 1-0 win over four-time champion Cameroon in the Accra final of the Africa Cup of Nations. The win sent Egypt into a jubilation spree which raged through the night and well into the hours of dawn. Ditties were sung for Egypt, the team, and the various players, but foremost was one which followed a popular folk tune “Hush, quiet…No words need speak…Give the Muallim [Master]…a prime salute”. The Muallim or grand master was none other than the coach Hassan Shehata for whom the acclaim was definitely well-earned, even if late in coming.
Best in Africa and Asia
The victory means Shehata joins an exclusive club of two coaches who have won back-to-back titles. He has to his credit a long record of superb playing and coaching; a few years ago he was nominated by football experts in Egypt as player of the 20th century.
Shehata’s beginnings with football, the no.1 sport in Egypt, was in the 1960s with the Bahari or Delta team, from which he was picked to play for one of Egypt’s two top football teams, that of Zamalek Club. His prowess quickly saw him on the national team but, as ill fate would have it, football games were halted altogether in Egypt following the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel. However, the Arab Club in Kuwait invited him to play and his performance was so brilliant that another Kuwaiti club, the Kazema, asked him to play on its team for the Asian cup. Kazema never won the cup, but Shehata was chosen the best player in Asia.
Once football games were resumed in Egypt in 1974, Shehata was back with Zamalek. He was on the national team in the Africa cup of nations held in Cairo that year and, even though Egypt came out third, Shehata was again chosen best player, this time in Africa.
Winning coach
On the field Shehata was the master striker who brought victory to his team. On one famous match against Esco in 1977 he scored the winning goal for his team when, 85 minutes into the match and no goals scored, he managed to shoot a goal as the ball was only a few millimetres away from the goalkeeper’s hand. It was this goal that earned him the title ‘Muallim’.
Shehata was forever loyal to Zamalek, in 1979 he gave up a lucrative offer to play for an Emirati club in favour of playing for Zamalek at one-tenth the sum he was offered by the former.
Shehata retired in 1984. He moved into coaching and, even though he repeatedly succeeded in leading the teams he coached to victory, for some vague reason the media refused to acknowledge his achievement and insisted the triumphs were pure luck.
In 2005 Shehata was chosen to coach the national team for the build up towards the World Cup, following failure by an Italian world-class coach. Under Shehata the team won all the games it played but one which was in Abidjan against the Côte d’Ivoire team and which Egypt lost 2-0. In 2006 the Egyptian team coached by Shehata, won the Africa Cup of Nations in Cairo, and later the Muallim began coaching the Egyptian team for the following tournament, a journey which was finally crowned with the Sunday win.