Algeria and Egypt set for turf war

Algeria and Egypt set for turf war

There will be no football played in Benguela tonight.

After Ghana and Nigeria finish kicking a ball around a pitch in Luanda, attentions will turn away from the Angolan capital to more weighty affairs in the south.

Because Algeria are not taking on Egypt for a place in the Africa Cup of Nations final.

The two are meeting in the theatre of combat.

Algeria striker Rafik Saifi is leading a tank platoon, while Egypt's Mohamed Zidan heads an elite special forces unit backed by helicopter gunships and amphibious assault craft.

Zidan himself has been quite clear on the subject.

"It will be a matter of life and death in that game," the forward said after the Pharaohs discovered they would be playing their fierce North African rivals in the semi-finals.

"For both sides it will be like a war."

So maybe – and only maybe – the rhetoric ahead of Thursday's clash has been slightly strong.

Maybe it is inappropriate to compare a football match to an actual war. Especially when people were killed in the attack on Togo's bus at the start of the tournament.

But it's not strictly inaccurate.

When the teams met in World Cup qualifying late last year, their two matches were marred by attacks by fans on players, violence between sets of supporters, reprisals on foreign nationals within each country and a diplomatic stand-off so intense it required Colonel Gaddafi to mediate.

And frankly, this is football. If you're going to get upset by hyperbole, then you're going to get upset very frequently indeed.

The relief is that this competition has finally had some passion injected into it.

Algeria versus Egypt is all the more exciting a prospect because of the heady brew of emotions that sits on the table between them, like a drink waiting to be spilled in a dockside bar.

For some supporters, the feeling is hatred. It may be disproportionate, but there's no escaping it.

The Algerian government is apparently planning to help fly in fans for the match, but fortunately – unlike in Cairo and Khartoum – the action is unlikely to take place off the pitch in the Angolan provinces.

For the players it is a question of settling scores and of healing wounded pride.

African champions Egypt got the 2-0 win they needed in Cairo to force a qualifying playoff in Sudan against Algeria last year.

But when they lost that fixture 1-0, sending the Desert Foxes to South Africa 2010, their status as top dogs was no longer unarguable.

"Now we can prove we beat them fairly, and not by luck," Algeria striker Hameur Bouazza said ahead of this match.

For Egypt's Zidan, who plays for Borussia Dortmund in the German Bundesliga, all sorts of vindication awaits.

"For us it is a chance to show the world that we deserve to go to the World Cup and if we beat them, we will be able to watch the World Cup with pride.

"We are the champions and we are better than them. Everybody will see who is the better team."

Well, not quite.

If Egypt win, Bouazza is unlikely to admit that Algeria were in fact lucky to qualify in Sudan. Algeria deserved to win because Antar Yahia scored and Egypt didn't.

But history matters in football, and in Algeria v Egypt, Khartoum 2009 looms large.

Let's hope they're still talking about Benguela 2010 in years to come. Even if the only shots fired in this war are on goal.