CAIRO, June 5, 2026: Egyptian football has finally returned to the world’s biggest stage. The team arrives with a lot of national pride, but honestly, everyone is tired after a very long season and fans are already expressing their opinions about the players chosen for the squad.
A nation holding its breath
After a crazy year of national and African football (with some big wins, some really frustrating losses and the exact kind of drama only seen in Egyptian football), everyone is now looking at the national team. The Pharaohs are ready for their fourth World Cup. For millions of fans, what happens next will prove whether this football season was a success or a complete failure.
The objective is very simple to say, but historically impossible for us: win a single game. Egypt never has. Not in 1934, not in 1990, and definitely not in 2018.
Our best moment in the World Cup so far was a 1-1 draw against the Netherlands in Italia ’90 (and they were the European champions at the time). That was nice, sure, but a real victory? This is still a dream we have been waiting for for almost a hundred years.
This time people really believe that we can get through the first round. The tie was good for us. Egypt is in Group G with Belgium, New Zealand and Iran. With the new 48-team system, the top two in each group advance, plus the eight best teams that finish third. With a group like this, Egypt has no excuse to go home early.
The coach: a legend with a lot of pressure
The person responsible is Hossam Hassan. Everyone in Egypt knows him: he is the top scorer in the history of the national team (69 goals), he won the African Cup of Nations three times as a player (1986, 1998, 2006) and, in fact, he was playing on the field in the 1990 World Cup. He knows exactly what it feels like because he was there.
But although he was a legendary player, he has yet to win a major trophy as a coach. In the last African Cup of Nations held in Morocco, Egypt finished fourth. It was good, but it wasn’t a trophy. This World Cup is his greatest opportunity to show that he is a great coach, as he was a great player.
To be fair, his numbers with the team are good: 19 wins, 8 draws and only 3 losses in 30 games. The team scored 44 goals and only scored 17. Those are good numbers. But the real test is the World Cup. That’s why everyone will judge him.
The team: stars, surprises and a big name excluded
Of course, Mohamed Salah heads the 26-man squad. No surprises there: Salah is Egyptian football. After nine incredible years at Liverpool, he has just left the club and now returns to carry the dreams of the entire country on his back.
Everyone is excited to see how Salah will play with Omar Marmoush. Marmoush has done very well with Frankfurt and Manchester City. He scored eight goals this season, which is really good because it’s hard to get playing time in a team like City.
Then there’s the story everyone is talking about: 18-year-old striker Hamza Abdel Karim. He belongs to Al Ahly but currently plays for Barcelona’s B team in Spain. If you talk to football fans at 2 in the morning, half of them think that calling up a teenager from the reserve team is a great move, and the other half think it’s a huge risk.
But let’s be honest: in Egypt, people talk more about the players who didn’t make the list than the ones who did.
Leaving out Mostafa Mohamed, the Nantes striker who is usually our best finisher, infuriated and confused everyone. The elimination of Mohamed Shehata, who played in the last African Cup of Nations, was another big surprise. And leave out Pyramids goalkeeper Ahmed El-Shenawy? Nobody understands that decision. Mohamed El-Shenawy from Al Ahly is there, so we have one Shenawy, but not both as people expected.
The group: a real opportunity
Let’s be real about Group G. Playing against Belgium, New Zealand and Iran is not a “Group of Death.” It’s a very normal group.
Egypt begins against Belgium on June 15 in Seattle, after playing a friendly match against Brazil on June 6 in Ohio. The game against Belgium is the most difficult, even if they are not as scary as their 2018 team. But Iran and New Zealand are games Egypt must win. If we lose points there, the home fans will be angry.
The dates:
• June 15: Egypt vs. Belgium (Seattle, USA)
• June 23: Egypt vs. New Zealand (Vancouver, Canada)
• June 27: Egypt vs. Iran (Seattle, USA)
The main ideas behind Hossam Hassan’s tactics:
Tactical discipline: He likes to close all spaces on the field so that the other team cannot breathe. He gives his midfielders and wingers very strict jobs to track and help defenders all the time.
Transitions: When the team wins the ball, it wants to go from defense to attack in a few quick passes. He loves to use the speed of his wingers and the vision of the backline to surprise the opponent.
Set pieces: Spend a lot of time working on corners and free kicks, both to score and defend. He sees them as a great scoring weapon when the other team is simply defending deep.
Motivation: Everyone knows him for his screams and his great energy on the touchline. He knows exactly how to motivate players to give 100% on the field, but always demands perfect discipline.
Summary of the season that brought the pharaohs here
To understand the mood around this team, it is necessary to have a complete view of what Egyptian football experienced in 2025/26:
• Pyramids FC represented Africa at the FIFA Club World Cup, reaching the finals, beating Auckland City 3-0 and Saudi Al-Ahli 3-1, before losing to Flamengo in the FIFA Challenge Cup. A historic streak from any point of view.
• The national team’s World Cup qualification was impressive: 8 wins in 10 games, 20 goals scored, of which Salah personally scored 9 of them. Egypt authoritatively topped its African qualifying group.
• AFCON 2025 (held in Morocco between December 2025 and January 2026) was a promising but ultimately frustrating campaign. Egypt beat Zimbabwe and South Africa, tied with Angola, beat Benin 3-1 in the round of 16, beat Ivory Coast 3-2 in the quarterfinals; they then lost to Senegal 1-0 in the semi-finals and finished fourth after losing the third-place playoff to Nigeria. Fourth place. Again. A nation that has won the AFCON seven times and finished fourth is not a crisis, but a state of mind.
• The youth teams offered some brilliance: the U-17 team won bronze at the African U-17 Championship, beating hosts Morocco 2-0.
• Domestically, Zamalek won the Egyptian Premier League title for the 15th time in their history after a grueling season, and also reached the final of the CAF Confederation Cup, only to lose on penalties to USM Alger.
• Meanwhile, Al Ahly won the Egyptian Super Cup but were eliminated from the CAF Champions League along with Pyramids at the hands of Tunisian and Moroccan rivals.
What fans really want
Egyptian fans are not easy to please. They love football, they know everything about tactics, they always argue, and they can celebrate a victory while still complaining about how the team played.
But if we forget all the talk, what they want from this World Cup is very simple:
Just win one game. Please. Just one.
If we can do it, getting past the first round (something Egypt has never done) will be a massive celebration on the streets of Cairo. And if Salah, in what could be his last World Cup, can score a goal or two, it will be a summer we will never forget.
The players are good. The group is not impossible. The coach wants to win. And since the games are played in the United States, the Egyptians who live there will make the stadiums look as if they were playing at home. It has been 92 years since Egypt played its first World Cup match. 2026 has to be the year we finally change history.