After the Mohamed Salah Crisis: Abu Rida Puts Out the Fire in Egypt's National Team in His Own Way

I keep returning to the trembling hands before the first whistle. In November 2026, during the Qatar World Cup, I sat in a small cafe in Mohammadpur, Dhaka, with three Morocco supporters — none of whom had ever set foot in Morocco, yet each of whom claimed that team as their own. When En-Nesyri headed past Portugal in the 42nd minute, nobody in that cafe could see anyone else's face through the glass — only trembling hands, tea gone cold, and water pooled in the corners of eyes. That night I understood that a national team is never merely eleven players; it is a country's self-image, the memory of migration, and the sum of belief. The crisis now surrounding Egypt's national team sits at exactly that kind of trembling hand — except this time the hands are not gripping a ball, they are waiting for a decision. And the name of that waiting has become Mohamed Salah. Hani Abu Rida, president of the Egyptian Football Association, now faces an equation in which the weight of every word is being measured. Head coach Hossam Hassan, and in a technical and administrative role his twin brother Ibrahim Hassan. The fracture between the staff structure built around these two brothers and the players in the dressing room is now the centre of the crisis. Mohamed Salah, Hamza Abdelkarim, Mohamed Abdelmonem — these three names keep circling through the coverage. Over recent days a rumour has spread through Egyptian media claiming that Ibrahim Hassan has been referred for investigation. But that claim has been confirmed nowhere; instead it has been dismissed as baseless. It was former goalkeeper and current pundit Ahmed Shobier who broke the subject through his social media posts, and from there the storm rose. Meanwhile the technical reports — including Khaled El Darandaly's — have not yet landed. So the federation is left with nothing but waiting. This is where I remember 2026. The pandemic had emptied the stadiums; there were no matches, yet Md. Abdul Malek, a 22-year-old groundsman at Bangabandhu National Stadium, watered the pitch every day. The campus-radio documentary I made about him was called The Groundsman's Rosary. In an empty stadium, the groundsman is the only person who keeps the field alive — no crowd, no scoreboard, only wet grass and the silent hum of floodlights. Egypt's crisis feels to me like exactly that kind of empty stadium. The headline carries Salah's name, but inside the ground there is no match at all — only waiting, reports, and the wet grass of a promise. Now to the real question. What kind of crisis is this? Is it a crisis of results, or a crisis of communication? The evidence at hand makes one thing clear — this is fundamentally a crisis of relationship, not of tactics. Nowhere in the source is there discussion of a formation, a system, or a style of play. Nowhere is there match data, xG, or possession. What exists is an administrative description — who is sitting where, who is trying to repair a relationship with whom. The first important observation follows: the federation's phrase technical and administrative staff points toward a dual-power structure. Hossam Hassan is head coach; Ibrahim Hassan sits in a technical and administrative role. When authority concentrates in the hands of two brothers, internal checks and balances weaken — and history shows such structures tend to amplify conflict rather than absorb it. The second observation: the federation's stated goal is to mend the relationship between the technical and administrative staff and the players. That sentence alone tells you the problem is relational, not tactical. When a coach says I will fix my relationship with the players, he is conceding that the relationship has broken. And behind a broken relationship usually lies either a lack of respect or a contest over authority. Now to the question everyone is avoiding — what exactly is Mohamed Salah's role here? The headline says Mohamed Salah crisis. But inside the actual report, Salah's name appears only in a list of three players — Salah, Hamza Abdelkarim, Mohamed Abdelmonem. This is where a significant gap opens. The headline puts Salah at the centre because Salah draws traffic; but the real event is probably a clash between the staff's authority and the players' grievances, in which Salah is simply the loudest voice. Look carefully at that list. Salah — a world-class star, the reference point of the national project. Hamza Abdelkarim — a young talent. Mohamed Abdelmonem — an established defender. That is a veteran superstar, a youngster, and a mid-career player. This age spread suggests the grievance is not a single incident; it is a cross-generational dissatisfaction. When questions arise about dressing-room culture, they usually spread exactly this way — from one man to the next. One more thing must be said. Egypt's national-team brand is heavily Salah-dependent. If he becomes disengaged from national duty, the cost is not just one team's — it is the soft power of Egyptian football as a whole. So when the federation says be patient, let the reports arrive, there is a practical calculation behind that patience: they want a defensible paper trail in hand before any decision. And here is my central realisation: Abu Rida's putting out the fire in his own way is not weakness, it is a deliberate governance tactic. It is a tactic of buying time — so that a written basis for accountability exists before a decision is made. Yet that same tactic carries a serious risk. If the reports are slow and the rumours are fast, public patience will run out. Then patience begins to look like inaction. In 2026 I watched Japan vs Belgium at a tea stall in Mirpur. Belgium won 3-2 through Chadli's 94th-minute goal. What moved me most afterwards was the Japanese fans — who cleaned the stands even in defeat. I replayed that match tape ten times, only to catch the silence before the counter-attack. The 94th minute tastes like over-steeped tea and unfinished sentences — bitter, but it has to be finished. Egypt's crisis now stands in that same 94th minute — everyone knows a decision is coming, but nobody knows how bitter it will be. So how solid is the informational basis beneath all this? Honesty is required here. Every claim traces to essentially one source — Ahmed Shobier's social media posts. He is a former goalkeeper and an influential commentator, that is, insider-adjacent but not an official or federation source. The federation itself remains silent. Every claim therefore rests on a single source, and that is the weakest point of this crisis. One more thing is worth noticing. How did the investigation rumour leak at all? Nobody confirmed it, yet the story spread. That means information is leaking from somewhere inside or around the federation — a sign of weak governance control. Or someone is deliberately spreading the rumour to shape public opinion and build pressure. Either way the question stands: how much of this crisis is natural, and how much is manufactured? There is a contradiction here that rarely enters the discussion. Because the federation is sending messages through an informal commentator, it signals that it has not yet decided — it is testing public reaction. This is a deliberate trial-balloon tactic. Before deciding, they are watching which direction produces which public response. One further question remains: who is most at risk in this crisis? The players, the coaches, or the federation? I think Salah's commitment to national duty is at risk first, because the national team's competitive ceiling depends largely on him. Next at risk is the coaching staff, whose future depends on that report. And last is the federation — though its damage is not immediate but long-term, to its reputation. This is where a contrarian angle is needed. Everyone is now looking at Salah. But I think the real story is not Salah — the real story is a dual-power structure in which two brothers hold both playing and administrative control at once. If that structure succeeds, fine; but if it fails, there is no internal mechanism to manage the crisis, because no independent voice remains. The second contrarian point — we usually assume that waiting means weakness. But for a federation, waiting can be a planned tactic. Deciding before the reports arrive is emotional; deciding after they arrive is procedural. In crisis management, it is the second that survives. The third point, which nobody wants to say — the role of the media in this crisis. If the media spreads a claim from an informal source as fact, then that media becomes part of creating the crisis rather than solving it. That harms the players, the coaches, and the federation alike. Now I return to the question I began with. Trembling hands. Those hands in the Mohammadpur cafe of 2026. That day those supporters trembled with joy. But those trembling now in Egypt's crisis tremble with uncertainty — will my team fall apart? Will my favourite player ever come back? In the empty stadium, just as the groundsman keeps the pitch alive, so some unnamed worker — whose name never reaches the news — keeps the wet grass of Egyptian football alive through this crisis. — Root: The groundsman. The man who does not watch the game, only keeps the field ready. Now the last word. This crisis will end — either through the report, or by slowly fading. But the time passing before a decision is the most important part. Because in that time we will learn whether the federation is truly managing the crisis, or performing the management of a crisis. Whether Salah returns depends on a single document — Khaled El Darandaly's report. When that report lands on the table, everyone may finally understand: the real work of putting out a fire is never done in a statement, it is done inside patience. And me? I will wait for the next match. Because when the ground is empty, the loudest things you hear are the sentences nobody wants to say.