Didier Drogba, one of Africa’s greatest strikers, calls him the toughest goalkeeper he ever faced. Spain’s Iker Casillas, the most decorated keeper of this century, named him as a role model and an object of study as he perfected his craft. What nobody can easily call Egypt’s Essam El Hadary is a “retiring” type.
He turned 44 a little more than two weeks ago, just as an extraordinary adventure in the Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon was taking shape.
El Hadary arrived in West Africa as part of a squad that hoped to signal a renaissance for the Pharaohs, six times African champions but absent from the previous three Nations Cup tournaments, symptom of problems in the country and within its national sport.
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When manager Hector Cuper’s first-choice gloveman, Ahmed El Shenawy, sustained an injury in the first half of the opening fixture against Mali, it looked like another setback that would bruise Egypt’s brittle morale.
Enter the veteran. Erase the record books. At that moment, El Hadary became the oldest footballer to appear on the field in the history of an event that began in the 1950s.
Cuper is expected to name El Hadary in the line-up for the semi-final against Burkina Faso in Libreville today. He scarcely has a choice. Clean sheets in every match, including the tense quarter-final against Morocco on Sunday, have made this Peter Pan of North Africa Essam the Impeccable.
There must be temptation to regard him as a lucky charm, too. Twice the frame of his goal kept Morocco from scoring as Egypt squeezed through to the last four.
What he does give his teammates is inspiration, authority and undoubted know-how in the business end of tournament football.
“I have had to show calm and guide the others through periods when we have been under pressure,” he said. “Not many of them have been involved in a Nations Cup before.”
El Hadary has played in six. His career stretches back so long you half expect to find accounts of his early matches recorded not in databanks but on papyrus.
Born in coastal Damietta, he had three seasons with his local club before joining the Cairo aristocrats Al Ahly, there to share in a gilded period of triumphs domestically and, come the new millennium, in the African Champions League.
He won the first of his 151 caps 21 years ago, and he will appreciate the aspect of deja vu around Wednesday’s’s fixture.
Back in 1998, at Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, Egypt met the then hosts of the Nations Cup at the semi-final stage. El Hadary was on the bench that day. The following weekend he collected his first Afcon gold medal as a Pharaoh after Egypt beat South Africa in the final.
It would not be long before he established himself as the senior goalkeeper for his country, and by many reckonings the finest in Africa of his generation. A young Casillas was struck by his shot-stopping, agility and mobility when Real Madrid met Al Ahly in Cairo, European grandees against serial African club champions. The reflexes remain just as sharp in his mid 40s. “I have worked really hard to keep in shape,” El Hadary said.
Cuper notes he is “first onto the training pitch, last to leave”.
His club career has taken various turns over the past decade, including a spell with Sion in Switzerland, and stopped off at several calling points in Egypt.
With the national team he collected a second, third and fourth Nations Cup prize as No 1 – hero of penalty shoot-outs, defier of the likes of Drogba – in 2006, 2008 and 2010.
A fifth would not even be the finale, he says. El Hadary the Unretiring is targeting a first World Cup experience in Russia next year.
Semi-finals in UAE time
• Burkina Faso v Egypt, Wednesday, 11pm
• Cameroon v Ghana, Thursday, 11pm
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