Egypt selected the squad to
face Cuba without three stars
 Cairo,
Egypt, May 15, 2007-: Three main stars will be absent when Egypt
faces Cuba in the first weekend of the 2007 World League on May
25 in Havana in their second successive year in the prestigious
FIVB competition as the only African country to have this honor.
The experienced team captain Hamdy El Safy will not participate
in this first match due to his involvement in the final year
exams. The Italian based main Setter Abdalla Abdel Salam who won
the Italian Cup last month with his team Treviso will be absent
also for his involvement in his teams final matches in the
Italian league. The third absent star will be the strong
opposite spiker Ahmed Salah who had a short contract with Gizera
club in United Arab Emirates and will join the team before the
second weekend when Egypt faces Serbia.
Egypt team started this week the count down final preparation
for their first match in the competition aiming to achieve their
competition first victory after they lost all their matches in
their participation in the 2006 edition. They started the
preparation last week after Ahly players who constitute the
cornerstone of the team returned back from Niger after their
participation in the 2006 Men's African Clubs Champions
Championship. The team entered the final closed camp this
weekend before departure to Cuba on May 23 under supervision of
the Polish head coach Grzegorez Rys and his assistant Ahmed
Zakaria.
The libero Wael Al Aydy and the setter Ashraf Aboul Hassan come
as the team most experienced stars of the new look team which
aim to improve their performance after they had good experience
through the participation in the 2006 World Championship in
Japan.
Speaking at the Olympic Centre in Cairo where the Egyptian team
has the last touches of preparation the Egyptian assistant coach
Ahmed Zakaria said that he aims to appear in a better
performance in this year's World League after the good
presentation in the last year. "We have now better experience in
this big FIVB event after the last year's World Championship in
Japan when we were near a second round slot." Zakaria added.
Photo Caption
Egypt Triple block in the last year's World League match
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