Last Thursday and in the panorama tent built under the pyramids, the draw of Egypt 2006, Nations cup took place. The tournament will start on the 20th of Jan and will end on the 10th of Feb. The ceremony started with welcoming the guests in the tent. Afterwards, there were some dances performed by the folklore group and everybody liked it because it shows a really Egyptian way of celebrating.

Many famous and important characters were in the ceremony including the Minster of Youth and sports, Mr. Mamdouh Al Beltagy. The governor of Cairo and Alexandria were there as well.

The representetor of the ceremony was a young lady dressed in a very attractive outfit. She is a represtetor in the Egypt Satellite channel. In the beginning, she welcomed the guests and she had a small speech which she said properly in three different languages: Arabic, English, and French.

Then it was time for the important guests’ speeches. Hany Abu Reeda, the president of the organizing committee, started and he welcomed everybody in the panorama and asserted that Egypt will have the best African cup ever. Second, Samir Zaher, the president of the Egyptian Football Federation, spoke about the history of Egyptian and African football and how Africa became one of the major powers in football. Mamdouh Al Beltagy than spoke and his speech was very short and consisted mainly of welcoming all the guests to Egypt. Last but not least, Mr. Esa Haiatoh, the president of the CAF, Confederation of the African Football spoke. He said that he is very happy for the level Africa reached in football nowadays and that four new teams from Africa qualified to the world cup for the first time. He added that he trusts Egypt to hold the best and most powerful African cup ever.

Afterwards Mustafa Fahmy, the CAF secretary who has been working for the CAF for 27 years, started operating the draw. He presented the four Egyptian football stars who participated in the draw one by one and each of them went on stage and took his part in the draw. The four stars were: Hassan Al Shazly who used to play for Tersana team or the Egyptian Arsenal. He was also a player in the national Egyptian team. The second star was Aly Abu Greisha, one Egypt’s best player and the first player to win the African champions league with Esmaily in the sixties. The third star was Ibrahim Yousef one of the best players in Zamalek and in Egypt in the eighties. The last star was Mahmoud Al Khateeb, the greatest football player in the history of Egypt and he is the only player who won the best player in Africa in 1983. El Khateeb is considered one of the most popular people in Egypt.

The draw results were as follows:

Group A

-Egypt
-Libya
-Ivory Coast
-Morocco

This group is considered one of the most powerful and will have strong competition. It contains Egypt with the 70 million fans that will be surrounding the team. This is besides Ivory Coast which became one of the strongest teams in Africa nowadays. The third strong team is morocco who lost the chance to qualify to the world cup in the last match against Tunisia and Egypt 2006 is their only chance. Morocco was the first runner up in the last tournament. Two of these teams will reach the quarter final

Group B

-Cameroon
-Angola
-Togo
-DR Congo

In this group everybody believes that Cameroon will qualify even as the head of the group. After loosing the chance to play in the world cup, Cameroon will not loose the chance to win the African cup easily. Togo, Angola, and DR Congo have equal chances of qualifying to the quarter final with Cameroon

Group C

-Tunisia
-Zambia
-South Africa
-Guinea

All the footballs specialists give Tunisia and South Africa a better chance of qualifying. Who knows maybe Guinea would make a big surprise.

Group D

-Nigeria
-Ghana
-Zimbabwe
-Senegal

This is considered the toughest group with two great teams in Africa who lost the chance to play in the world cup: Nigeria and Senegal and both teams have many players who play in famous clubs in Europe. The problem is that Ghana who won’t the cup four times before and who qualified to the world cup next year will play in the same group as well. There will be a great football fight between these three teams to take off one of them and the other two will play in the quarter final.

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