Al Ahly 1 - 3 ESS
CAF Champions League 2007 final · 2007-11-09 Referee: Abderrahim El Arjoun

Mubaraks's wife

for instance

Fot instance, there was the 0-1 coming from an off-side situation while Al Ahly's goal was rejected for the same reason. Then the Egyptians didn't get a penalty when it was clear that their player got kicked in the box and to add insult to injury one of their side got red carded. Later on the very same assistant referee who didn't flag for off-side for the Star of the Sahara, did so when the home team was in the very same situation.

a closer look (after some rewinding)

The first Al-Ahly goal was clearly off-side and the first ESS goal was a legitimate one. That player was not off-side, but in a line with a defender. A good decision by the assistant and thanks to the repeats by the Egyptian television whose director clearly wanted us to see how wrong it was, we could see that the referee had been right. El Arjoun was right too with the red card. His assistant made a mistake with off-side the second time though.
El Arjoun's only really bad decision was not awarding a penalty. An Etoile sider made a sliding in the box when the ball was already a metre or two away. El Arjoun wasn't at the right place to see it. Big mistake. So was he biased (as all Egyptian papers and Forums shout)? I don't think so. Maybe because he had awarded a dive once and regretted doing so, he decided not to fall for it again.
The Moroccan referee is tall and moves slowly, relaxed, so it seems. He was a bit far away from the action sometimes, but he seems to be a good referee. He really looks the part too.

match

Both teams played a lot better than in the first match, still I can't really see why everybody thought Al-Ahly would win this. Their losing was a mixture of bad luck and incompetence. Again most passes went nowhere.
All players behaved themselves very well though. No one seemed to say anything unfriendly or disrespectful to the referee.

meanwhile in the audience

President Mubarak's wife clapped her hands after Al Ahly's goal, then she looked at her husband 'Am I doing the right thing, dear?'

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