Egypt to investigate ‘violations’ amid team’s exit from the World Cup

Egypt’s Parliament’s Youth and Sports Committee has decided to launch an investigation into the defeat of its national team at the World Cup.

The committee said on Monday that it was deeply upset with the team’s unexpected performance and loss in all its matches against Uruguay, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

It added that the team’s manager Hector Cuper and the players bear the responsibility of this “humiliating exit” and the “dishonorable representation” and said the Egyptian Football Association is also responsible for the violations of the Egyptian mission.

The committee added that it intends to form a fact-finding mission to look into a number of violations.

The committee will investigate the statements of Magdi Abdelghani, member of the Egyptian Football Association, and his threats to expose everything after the association decided not to include him in the mission that accompanies the team to Russia because it accused him of stealing the team’s uniforms.

It will also look into how Abdelghani later travelled to accompany the team’s mission after making these statements.

The committee will also investigate why the team was situated in Grozny which is far from the stadiums where the matches were held and how a group of actors, actresses and businessmen were allowed to be at the hotel where the team players were.

It will also investigate why the agreement between the parliament and the football association to form an independent commission to sell tickets to the team’s matches and prevent illegal purchase of tickets was violated.

The committee also addressed the problems which the association caused for Mo Salah and which began with the unauthorized use of his image on the outside of the national team’s plane which was provided by official sponsor WE, a rival of Vodafone which Salah has a deal with.

The second crisis was when the association accepted the dinner invitation extended by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

Kadyrov honored Salah and gave him honorary citizenship during the dinner, thus stirring the British media against Salah as there are disputes between Britain and Chechnya.

The committee said the association officials should have been careful and should not have involved Salah in such issues, adding that it will investigate all these violations and announce the results to the public opinion and punish whoever committed any mistakes.