Not long after the Egyptian national team returned from an impressive World Cup campaign to a massive reception and countrywide fanfare last month, Egypt’s Cleopatras flew to Morocco to participate in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (Wafcon), looking to keep the celebrations going.
But while the men made history in North America by reaching the last 16 and narrowly losing to defending champions Argentina, the women's team suffered three heavy defeats, conceding 15 goals and netting just three to be eliminated from the group stage.
Egypt were making just their third appearance in the competition and their first since 2016.
The Cleopatras didn’t actually qualify for the continental showpiece. With Wafcon expanded from 12 to 16 teams, Egypt made it by dint of being one of the four highest-ranked sides eliminated in the final round of qualifying.
Egypt is a football-mad nation with plenty of talent among its population of 120 million, but the women’s national team rarely gets a fraction of the attention and support afforded to the men’s national team.
Over the past two decades, the first team has been formed and disbanded multiple times, with minimal structure and strategy in place to develop it.
In recent years, however, more money has been pouring into women’s football in Egypt as the domestic league expanded, thanks to pressure from the Confederation of African Football (CAF), which mandated Africa’s major men’s clubs create women’s teams to keep their continental licences.
In the build-up to the 2026 Wafcon in Morocco, the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) dedicated resources to set up friendly games and training camps for the women’s national team and brought back a former manager, Mohamed Kamal, to take charge of the Cleopatras, alongside his duties as the coach of the National Bank of Egypt women’s team.
But after a six-month preparation period and an unsuccessful campaign in Morocco, Kamal has come under fire from players, past and present, who have accused him of favouritism, a lack of professionalism, creating a divide between squad members, and adding unqualified individuals to his roster.
Sarah Essam, the first Egyptian player to play professional football in England and Spain, is the most vocal critic of Kamal and was the first to hint at the problems within the Egypt camp in a passionate social media message she posted upon the team’s return from Morocco.
After apologising to the Egyptian public for the poor results at Wafcon (Egypt lost 6-0 to Zambia, 3-1 to Malawi and 6-2 to Nigeria), Essam wrote: “God is my witness that I’ve never spared any effort or a single drop of sweat for Egypt since I was first called up at the age of 14…
“Egypt’s national team is bigger than any individual. It deserves a professional environment built on fairness, equality in the treatment of all players and footballing decisions based on merit and ability, free from favouritism or personal considerations, with the best interests of the national team always coming first.”
The 27-year-old forward, who played for England's Hull City last season, played just 90 minutes across the three games in Morocco – one half against Zambia and one half against Malawi – and took aim at Kamal.
What she witnessed during the team’s training camps and at Wafcon was “a disaster”, Essam told The National.
“I have no vested interest. But I feel that the public deserves to know what happened. It’s time to speak up, I won’t keep quiet. And I’m doing this for everyone’s sake,” she added.
Essam said the EFA did their part and set up eight friendly games between February and July and held multiple training camps to prepare Egypt for Wafcon.
“This gives the manager ample opportunity to work, if he and his technical staff want to work,” she explained.
“Over the eight games, we played with different line-ups; not a single line-up was repeated. Over the eight games, new players were brought in with dual nationalities, players were offered passports, players came in from abroad; not one of his requests was denied.
“The EFA spent money, to be honest, and they did everything he [Kamal] wanted. And yet we didn’t do anything [at Wafcon].
“At the very least, given we had eight games, if he had stuck to a specific line-up and worked in an honest way, we would have at least had game management. So that if we’re facing a very strong team, we would play defensively when we needed to and we wouldn’t concede six goals.”
Essam started her career at Wadi Degla club, which Kamal coached in the past, and said she had known the manager since she was young.
“We were humiliated [at Wafcon] and we could have performed way better. He would ask players for gifts in exchange for playing time; a player would cry and her mother would call him so he would play her the next day,” Essam alleged.
“Another player, he’d promise her a certain number of minutes and she is unqualified to be part of the team to begin with. Another one would call him and tell him ‘I have university abroad; if I come, will you play me?’ ‘Oh yes, I’ll play you’, he’d say. At the expense of who?
“Another player is injured but he put her on the squad list so he could make her happy... one of the dual-nationality players. Talking to the players, he’d say stuff like, ‘Don’t talk to this girl, stay away from that person these days, don’t hang out with this group’. Does he not realise the reputation of a country’s national team is at stake? He used to do these things when I was young at Wadi Degla, but now he’s leading a country’s national team!”
What rubbed salt into the wound is that fellow Arab countries Morocco and Algeria both qualified for next year’s World Cup in Brazil by virtue of reaching the Wafcon semi-finals, with Algeria securing a third-place finish for the first time.
Malawi, who were making their Wafcon debut and are the lowest-ranked team in the competition, didn’t just beat Egypt; they made it all the way to the final and have showcased tremendous progress despite their eventual 3-0 defeat to champions Cameroon.
Egypt are clearly lagging. The fact that the players were wearing the men’s national team jerseys, which have seven stars indicating the record seven African titles won by the Pharaohs, during Wafcon’s media day is just one example of how the women are so often seen as an afterthought within the Egyptian football ecosystem.
“With all due respect to Malawi, Egypt’s name in football is bigger than Malawi, yet they qualified for the World Cup, so it’s not impossible. Their ranking is 153 and we’re 90-something and they beat us and they qualified for the World Cup,” said Essam.
“The fault is not on the players. If you have a good coach, you should be able to beat a team of that ranking or, at the very least, match their result.”
Essam claims that there was a lack of seriousness and discipline within the national team camp and that there were no professional boundaries between the technical staff and the players.
She also revealed that Kamal blocked her on Instagram a year and a half ago, and when she asked him if he had a problem with her, he allegedly said: “Weren’t you the reason I was let go after the Senegal loss?”
Essamn claims that Kamal’s team selections were even influenced by visits from players’ parents.
“For a parent to go directly to the coach’s room to vouch for his daughter to be included, how is this acceptable? Since when do parents interfere in the affairs of a national team?” asked Essam.
“The favouritism is unbelievable. And the talk is rarely about the football; it’s always side topics.”
Essam’s sentiments, posted on Instagram, were echoed by her teammate Eman Hassan, who scored as a substitute against Malawi and shared similar views on social media.
“Not everything is visible from the outside, but God sees every effort and every sacrifice,” the Al Ahly forward wrote.
“I hope that, moving forward, every player is given a fair opportunity and treated equally, because fairness and equal treatment are the foundation of every successful team.”
Kamal commented on Hassan’s post, commending her on her spirit and saying she would have been one of the team's stars at Wafcon had she not been injured. Hassan responded by saying, “Injury? This is the first time I’m hearing of this injury, coach. ‘Injured’, yet you subbed me in and I scored a goal,” she added sarcastically with a laughing emoji.
Sally Mansour, who was part of the national team set-up for many years, including the friendlies in the build-up to Wafcon, accused Kamal of dropping her from the Wafcon squad “without any clear or convincing technical reason”.
In a social media post, Mansour, who has played football in Europe and Saudi Arabia, claimed that Kamal convinced her to join his club, the National Bank of Egypt, and then discarded her from the national team with no warning.
“What surprised me even more was that, at the same time, players were selected who, in my opinion and based on what I saw on the field, didn't qualify them to represent the Egyptian national team in a tournament of this magnitude,” wrote Mansour.
“This made me wonder: were the selections truly based purely on technical merit, or was there favouritism and other considerations at play?
“The Egyptian national team isn't a place for favouritism. Selection should be based on skill, readiness, and performance.”
In interviews with YallaKora and FilGoal, Kamal dismissed the players’ claims as “false” and said he was planning on suing “everyone who has insulted, slandered, and attacked me personally for personal gain”.
He insisted that the national team’s doctor was the one who determined the playing time for certain players and that he believed, “there is a systematic campaign to tarnish my image by some of the players”.
The National contacted the EFA for comment. It is believed the matter is being discussed internally, and the players will be heard.
Essam says there is a way forward from all this and she hopes the EFA will, in the future, hold regular meetings with some of the more experienced players on the national team to discuss how things are going and how they can be improved.
Among the key factors for future development, Essam said: “We need to have qualified staff with experience at the national team level or in big leagues, ones who don’t have personal interests in the domestic football scene in Egypt.
“We can have a local coach but at least build an entire staff with experienced personnel from abroad, so they can treat us with fairness and so they are updated on the latest best practices. They should know how people train abroad, from a technical perspective, a fitness perspective, and how to properly analyse matches.
“There also must be set criteria for players getting called up for the national team. If someone is excelling in the league, she deserves to join, even if she doesn’t have a ‘wasta’ [an in]. If someone plays abroad but is unqualified, she shouldn’t join us.
“All I’m asking for is football; normal standards for football at this level. There needs to be a reward and punishment system for players who aren’t properly committed, and we need rules that we should all follow.
“We also have to continue with our camps, and gather during every international break, even if we don’t have a competition coming up. We need to look at Fifa’s agenda and schedule a friendly during every stoppage in club play. This will keep us ready year-round.”
