Al-Ahram Weekly | Sports | Taking over a winner

		27 June - 3 July 2002 Issue No. 592 Sports	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Taking over a winner
Farouq Gaafar is the new head coach of league champions Ismaili. Abeer Anwar reports

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Farouq Gaafar now takes his act to Ismaili
The guessing game is over. After weeks of speculation, Farouq Gaafar was selected the new head coach of Ismaili, replacing Mohsen Saleh who takes the helm of the national football squad.
Gaafar signed on for a two-year contract worth LE27,000 a month. A star midfielder with Zamalek in the 1970's, Gaafar was delighted with his new job. "I'm very happy to be chosen for such a position," Gaafar said last week. "Ismaili is a great club and its players are very talented. It will be an honour to coach them and follow in the footsteps of a coach like Mohsen Saleh."
Gaafar is to leave Ghazl Al-Mehalla which he took to fourth place in the league table and a semi-final berth in the FA cup before the team went down to eventual champions, Zamalek. Mehalla is currently in the quarter-finals of the African Cup Winners Cup. Gaafar's replacement has yet to be named.
Gaafar's contract with his former club expires on 30 July. "I admire Mehalla but it is enough to coach a team for two seasons. You need to change and feel you are doing something different."
Ismaili, which won this season's league crown following a down to the wire finish with Ahli, had initially sought a foreign coach, including Belgian Jacques Minatich. Minatich was in Egypt earlier last month and was also being courted by Ittihad of Alexandria which had offered him a $5,000 a month salary. However, the negotiations broke down when Minatich said he would settle for nothing less than $12,000.
Other names on Ismaili's shopping list was Luka of the Ukraine, coach of Jeddah's Ahli and Turkish Mohsen Ortigal, coach of Kaizer Chiefs of South Africa.
Ismail Osman, president of Ismaili Club, had also announced that an eastern European candidate was being considered but in the end, in an attempt to reduce costs, the club's board members decided an Egyptian was the best man -- and the cheapest -- for the job.
Despite Gaafar's relatively modest salary by world standards, Ismaili is still in financial straits and is considering sending its top player, midfielder dynamo Mohamed Barakat, on loan to Al-Wehda of the United Arab Emirates following an offer by the club which reportedly exceeded $500,000 for one year.
Gaafar's first decision as Ismaili coach was to withdraw from a Romanian international football tournament which starts next month. Instead he opted for a tournament in Abha, Saudi Arabia, and the Osman Ahmed Osman Tournament organised by the Arab Contractors.
Annoos is expected to continue with Ismaili as an assistant coach to Gaafar with the help of the same staff, Khaled El-Qammash and Abu Taleb El-Isawi, that guided the club to their third league title in their history and the first since 1991.
Gaafar has coached Ghazl Al-Mehalla's cross- town rivals, Baladiyet Al-Mehalla, and his former club Zamalek. In 1999, he was banned from coaching for one year after ordering Zamalek players off the field five minutes into their game with Ahli, after Zamalek's Aiman Abdel- Aziz was red-carded for barreling into defender Ibrahim Hassan.
Gaafar was twice named the continent's best midfielder and in 1975 was chosen by the influential sports magazine France Football the seventh best African player that year.

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