The men’s beach handball team of Egypt have qualified for the 2022 IHF Men’s Beach Handball Championship and The World Games 2022 after winning the African Handball Confederation (CAHB) Men’s Beach Handball qualification event held in Casablanca, Morocco, on Sunday 10 April.

In the best of three series, Egypt took a 2-0 unassailable series lead against the hosts, thanks to a 2-0 and 2-1 win in the first two games.

Egypt are coached by Wael Abdul El Atty, known as Wael Aly, who has a long and historic relationship with the sport in the North African country.

Aly was captain of the Egyptian men’s side when they lifted the first-ever IHF Men’s Beach Handball World Championship trophy, on home sand in El Gouna back in 2004 before going on to play in the following championship in Brazil (2006) as captain and assistant coach. In 2010, he led the team as head coach to a fourth-place finish in Turkey.

Aly is also the only player in Egypt to win a World Championship in both seven-a-side handball, at the 1993 IHF Men’s Junior World Championship, and beach handball (2004). They were both held in Egypt.

“We last played Morocco back in 2019 but before the game I knew my team was better than them, but this time Morocco were much better than before,” said Aly to ihf.info. 

“The first match we won 2-0 but it was a very close game and my goalkeeper had a very good match. The second match we were leading in the first period, but one of my players got a foot injury and my players were affected, and we lost the period. The second period we came out strongly, winning 18:8 and then in the shoot-out we won 7:4 to take the game.”

El Hawar’s Ahmed el Sayed Ahmed top-scored in the first match for the Egyptian side with 18 points, while Al Ahly’s Mahmoud Noman grabbed 14 points in the second to finish as the best scorer for Egypt.

Aly based his squad for Morocco around a trio of players who had played for him in their fourth-placed finish at the 2019 Mediterranean Beach Games in Greece. Alongside those three – Mahmoud Ahmed Ismail, Ahmed Sayed and Mahmoud Gamal Osman – the coach added youngsters as he looks to the future with the team.

“Other than those three from 2019 I chose young, tall players who have an ability to learn very fast,” said Aly, who has coached the Egyptian men’s younger age indoor teams including the junior team, who he led to a fourth-placed finish at the 2015 IHF Men’s Junior (U21) World Championship in Brazil.

“All the other players are just learning beach handball and I take them to Morocco,” he added. “We don’t have beach handball clubs in Egypt or beach handball tournaments like a national championship, just the national team.

“We started preparing for this three weeks ago and I hope to achieve a good place in Greece because at our last World Championship, in 2016, we did not have a good place. Now we try to do the best with our national team.”
 

Photo: Egyptian Handball Federation