Benghazi (DPA)
A negative tie camped once morest the Sudanese Al-Merreikh and its Egyptian guest, Zamalek, today, Friday, in the second round of Group D in the CAF Champions League.
The two teams did not succeed in scoring for 90 minutes, to score the first point in their championship career.
Zamalek had started his career by losing to Algeria’s Belouizdad youth, 0 1/ in the first round, which is the same result that the Sudanese Al-Merreikh lost to its Tunisian host, Esperance.
The start of the mid-level match came, and Zamalek quickly imposed its control over the course of the match.
On the other hand, Al-Merrekh relied on short passes between the players and launched counter-attacks, taking advantage of the presence of spaces in Zamalek’s defense as a result of the high pressure imposed by the white team.
During the first quarter of the first half, Zamalek players forced Al-Merreikh players to commit passing errors, but Zamalek players failed to take advantage of them in threatening the goal of Mohamed Al-Mustafa, Al-Merreikh goalkeeper.
On the other hand, the Al-Merreikh team was able to threaten the Zamalek goal in two chances, the first was in the tenth minute when I played a cross that Paulo Sergio de Souza met with a shot, but his ball passed over the crossbar. The second chance came in the 13th minute, when De Souza missed the opportunity to score the lead goal, when she played a corner kick that caused confusion inside the penalty area, to reach De Souza, who hit a powerful ball that Hossam Abdel Majeed pushed away.
After that attack, the Zamalek players were forced to return to the center of their stadium to close the spaces and started pressing from the middle of their stadium, which enabled the Sudanese Al-Merreikh team to impose its control over the course of the match.
Play was confined to the middle of the field until the 20th minute came, which witnessed a dangerous opportunity for Al-Merreikh when a free kick was played into the Zamalek penalty area, which Matizinho met with a shot, but his ball went over the crossbar.
Zamalek almost surprised Al-Merreikh by scoring the goal of progress in the 32nd minute, when Sergio Rafael, the Al-Merreikh player, missed passing the ball, reaching Saif Farouk Jaafar, to pass the ball to the unattended Saif Al-Din Al-Jaziri, to hit a strong ball, but it went over the crossbar.
Al-Marrekh responded with a dangerous opportunity in the 40th minute, when Matizinho passed a through ball to Al-Ghazouli Noah on the left side on the borders of the Zamalek penalty area, but Noah hit a weak ground ball that passed next to the left post of goalkeeper Mohamed Awad.
The remaining time of the first half passed without anything new, before the referee blew the whistle at the end of the first half.
With the start of the second half, the game became a record between the two teams in search of scoring the goal of progress.
Mars almost opened the scoring in the 49th minute, when de Souza hit a powerful ball from outside the penalty area, but it came far from goal.
Zamalek responded in the next minute when Nabil Emad hit a powerful ball, which was brilliantly saved by Mohamed Al-Mustafa, the Mars goalkeeper.
In the 55th minute, Alex da Silva penetrated the ball from the right side until he entered the penalty area, and hit a powerful ball, which Awwad turned with difficulty into a corner kick that was not used.
With the passage of time, Zamalek imposed control over the course of the meeting, and offensive attempts continued, in search of finding a loophole in the Al-Merreikh defense, which retreated to the center of its stadium and relied on launching attacks.
Despite Zamalek’s attempts, he failed to pose any real danger to Al-Merrekh’s goal, who also failed to threaten Awad’s goal, limiting play to the midfield.
The game remained confined to the middle of the field until the 70th minute came, which saw a dangerous opportunity for Zamalek when it played a corner kick inside the Al-Marrekh penalty area, so the goalkeeper pushed it away before Al-Jaziri hit it with a double backhand kick that the defense pushed away, to bounce back to Saif Farouk Jaafar inside the penalty area to hit a powerful ball, but His ball hit the left post.
Al-Merreikh missed a sure goal opportunity in the 78th minute, when it played a long throw-in into the Zamalek penalty area, Zamalek defenders tried to push it away to reach Ramadan Agab, who met it with a double backhand kick, but Awad shone and blocked the ball before the defense dispersed it.
The offensive attempts of the two teams continued in search of scoring the winning goal, but they failed to do so, so the referee blew the whistle at the end of the second half, and the match ended in a goalless draw.
