Issue No. 600
Sports
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22 - 28 August 2002 Issue No. 600 Sports |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
A matter of descent
Ahli club's former Vice-President Hassan Hamdi secured his spot as the club's new president. He spoke to Inas Mazharabout his aspirations for the club
It is seldom that one wins a title before the competition has even taken place. Ahli's Hassan Hamdi, however, somehow beat the odds, becoming the 13th president in the history of the club before the 20 August elections had even come close.
The catch? The deadline for the candidates to submit their nomination papers had passed, and Hamdi's candidacy for the post stood unchallenged. Hamdi, hence, automatically took over the post left vacant by the death of late President Saleh Selim three months ago.
Despite the grand victory, elections were carried out as scheduled on Tuesday. The results, of course, already known.
"Winning the title uncontested is something great and means a lot to me," Hamdi told Al-Ahram Weekly. "It means faith and trust from the members of the club who are confident that I'm the right one for the place; that I'm the one who is capable of running the club and maintaining the same democratic policy that distinguished the club from other clubs in the country. And from my side," he continued, "It means a great responsibility towards the club in order to keep its stability."
It is a task that Hamdi will unquestionably tackle with diligence, for the club, it is known, is in his blood.
Hamdi's Ahli career began at the age of ten, when he joined the juniors football team in the fifties. He took little steps and then larger ones, joining the first team as a defender in 1967. His league championship play was spectacular, and his reputation grew strong; being dubbed by the media as the 'minister of defence'.
Appropriately, he was selected to the national team -- to which he dedicated himself until 1977, when he stunned the public by opting for early retirement.
"I was only 27 years old," he said. "Many people were surprised when I announced my retirement at such an early age -- not because of injury. At that time I had started my career at Al-Ahram's Pyramids Advertising Agency," he explains. "I couldn't coordinate properly between both training, matches and work. I loved my job very much and felt that my future lies there, so I had to sacrifice one of them and it was football."
A confession admirable amidst a football- frenzied nation.
The choice paid off, and Hamdi's growing presence and position in the Al-Ahram Organisation proved his sacrifice worthwhile. Hamdi is currently a board member, general manager of advertising for all Al-Ahram publications, and supervisor of the Pyramids Advertising Agency. He has tackled all of his posts with the same type of energy he used while attacking on the pitch, but despite his devotion to Al-Ahram, Hamdi never did quite give-up possession of the ball. First love's, it is commonly said, never die, and to Hamdi, football certainly never did.
"It's a field I liked most and found myself in," Hamdi said on his decision to take up an administrative Ahli post. "I became the administration manager of the Ahli first team for three seasons starting exactly a year after my retirement in 1978. Ahli won all championships then," he continued. "That success has opened my way to the club's board of directors."
The so-called football minister of defence has a knack for moving up. Starting his post-player football career as a member of the Ahli board, he stepped on to treasurer, up to deputy president, vice president, and now, at last, up to president of the club. He never, of course, skipped a term.
It is undisputed in the local football community that Hamdi is the ideal candidate for the post. In his years as a member of the Ahli family, Hamdi is known to have been Selim's right-hand.
"Being close to Selim has been extremely beneficial to me," he told the Weekly. "I have learned a lot from this great person. He was a great leader on and off the pitch. You can't always find people of that kind -- they're hard to come across," he continues. "He taught me -- all of us, really -- the meaning of being fair and being strict. He was a strong character and was the one who created the stable and respectable reputation the club has. He made it one of the biggest firms in the region."
It was quite clear to Ahli members and fans that Hamdi had learnt and learnt well from their cherished past president. The policies of the club, therefore, were sure to be preserved. And Hamdi, it must be mentioned, had already proven himself in the past; taking over the running of the club during Selim's repeated trips to London for treatment. It was a job, everyone agreed, that he did well. But he is the first to admit, that occasionally there were disputes.
"But that never affected our personal relationships," he assures. "It's normal that we disagreed about some issues many times over the past years, but as president of the club, we had to respect his decisions because we respected him and respected the club's welfare as well."
Hamdi did a good job, but he must really be commended for keeping at bay his football past. Despite being an old-time footballer, he not once interfered with the team manager's tactics or techniques.
"That is something I will maintain. The club's policy is never to interfere in how the football manager or supervisor runs team matters. We are only supervisors from the board. Our duty is to provide them with all facilities and question them in the case of failure."
Failure, he stresses fast, is a relative thing.
In response to the eyebrows raised at Ahli's new manager, Dutchman Joe Bonfrere, Hamdi quietens the critics by insisting that it is too early to judge.
"He only took over last month," he says. "He played just three games with the team; they won a friendly against AS Roma and lost two crucial African clashes. But we can't judge him now. I believe that we still have chances in the championship [African Champion's League], and can still compete and defend our title," he continued, in reference to Ahli's second consecutive defeat at the hands of Rajaa Casablanca in Morocco last Sunday.
He is optimistic not just about football, but about the club as a whole: Even those sports and activities that currently bring nothing in.
"We have 18 different sports in the club," he says. "Each game includes junior and senior teams as well as male and female ones. We spend a lot on these teams, and this past term, we lost more than LE15 million because we spend and gain nothing. These games are unprofitable, but we still have to nurture them as a club because we gain moral profit from them."
It is a kind of profit unmatchable by money; knowing that the club is providing the opportunity to the nation's youth to experiment with activities and explore their talents and potential. It is something, Hamdi stresses, that must be taken care of.
"After all, the Ahli club is a social and sports club. Some clubs are known to be social, sports comes second and vice versa. Ahli is known to be both," he says. "The club members expect a lot from us, they expect more services. We have to ensure that they get their social rights which include playing arenas for children, cafeterias, entertainment services and courts to play on because all the club's courts are restricted to the practice of the club's teams. The members are not receiving their social rights. We have an obligation towards them, but how come when we lose all this money on other sports?" He is not quite sure, but it is something he is willing to face head-first.
The problem, it appears, is that Ahli leads a double role.
"Normally, clubs in developed countries are either sports or social," he points out. "Even sports clubs, they concentrate on one or two games only. As they spend, they gain titles and money as well. We still need a long way to recognise this fact. Its a difficult move that needs to be taken in the nation's policy."
Difficult, he says, but critical to the nation's success as a whole.
On a micro-level, the policy of the club is one that Hamdi assures the public he will maintain.
"We started it [the policy] with Selim two years ago. The board -- as a group -- works for the sake of the club," he says. "As a president, I hope to keep that working condition spirit so that we can continue the projects that we had already started; including maintenance of the improved Gezira and Nasr City headquarters, as well as the resumption of the construction work at the club's extension at the 6th of October city."
The key, he says, is preserving the stability with which the club was functioning under the expert command of the legendary Selim. A task, the public believes, which Hamdi was honed to overtake. Something, the nation knows, which is simply in his blood.
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