A sudden crisis witnessed the confrontation between Al-Hilal of Sudan and Al-Ahly of Egypt in the first matches of the group stage in the African Champions League, Omdurman, on Saturday.
The match, which was announced to be held without fans, according to the decision of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), ended with the victory of Al-Hilal with a clean goal that came from a fatal mistake by Al-Ahly goalkeeper Muhammad Al-Shennawy, who later saved a penalty kick that might have doubled Al-Hilal’s yield.
After the match, the cameras monitored a clash between members of the two teams, during which Al-Shennawi stood out with his tall stature.
Statements varied regarding what happened, as the Al-Ahly camp considered that the Al-Hilal doctor, Awad Othman Al-Jaali, was the one who initiated the attack on the members of the Al-Ahly team, while the doctor accused, in statements reported by the “Yalla Koura” website, two players from Al-Ahly of assaulting him following treating the player Lilibo Maccabi, and accusing him of being He worked to waste time and his team is 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 was “committed to the tasks of my job only, which is considered a humanitarian profession in the first place” by treating the players.
However, the Filjool website published statements, contrary to its attribution to a source in Al-Ahly, who said that the Al-Hilal doctor was the one who assaulted 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 the evidence is that the referee expelled the doctor.”
And he continued: “It is strange that the Al-Hilal doctor did not leave the stadium and was on the bench until the end of the match, so Al-Shennawi went to him following the match and he wanted to know the reason for his behavior, and not clash with him.”
The cameras showed that Al-Shennawi entered into an altercation with some members of Al-Hilal’s technical staff minutes before the end of the match, and it continued following the referee’s whistle amid the shouts of the fans.
And according to what was reported by the Cairo newspaper, Al-Shorouk, the Al-Ahly administration, the runner-up of last year’s edition, expressed a “state of dissatisfaction” with the behavior of its counterpart in the Sudanese Al-Hilal club.
Al-Ahly’s dissatisfaction focused on “statements made by Al-Hilal officials before the match, which indirectly questioned the integrity of the Confederation of African Football’s decision not to allow fans to attend the match, as the Sudanese club’s vice president, Muhammad Al-Aleqi, considered that CAF is working to compliment some specific teams in the continent.” , which Al-Ahmar officials considered an explicit attack on the club, despite their lack of interference in that matter from near or far.
And the Al-Ahly administration considered that the statements of Al-Hilal officials ignited the atmosphere before the match, which led to a state of provocation throughout the course of the match in the stadium, and it came to directing insults from the main cabin to a number of the visiting team’s players, according to Al-Shorouk.
While the “Sada Al-Balad” website reported that Al-Ahly will file an official complaint with the African Union, within hours, regarding what happened.
While the head of the Al-Hilal team, Hisham Hassan Al-Sobat, considered that his team had defeated “more than one goal” once morest Al-Ahly, and posted on his Facebook account: “It is true that the goal of victory came in the net of Al-Shennawi. But the second goal was in the net of injustice, surveillance, extremism, and inequality between clubs. “.
Al-Sobat added: “Will triumphed and right prevailed thanks to the brilliance of our great heroes, the ingenuity of the technical staff that managed the match optimally, the brothers in the board of directors and the football department, as well as the great Al Hilal fans who endured the hell of deprivation and deputized a few group, but it was exactly on time and did its part to to achieve victory.”
