Sports

If you follow Lebanon closely, you've already seen this and had a good laugh about it. If not: Lebanon's top politicians met yesterday at the Cite Sportif (عربي) in Beirut for a "national unity" football game to mark the 35th anniversary of the start of the Lebanese civil war.

So Lebanese papers this morning are full of images like this one:

The Hariri-led red team won the match, 2-0, over the white team, led by Hizballah MP Ali Ammar. NOW Lebanon has a bit of video; Sean Lee and Qifa Nabki have some amusing details and more photos of the match; and al-Mustaqbal has a seemingly endless collection of Hariri photos (عربي).

The match was played in an empty stadium, by the way, for security reasons. And it doesn't seem to have impressed many people in Lebanon.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is in for a year of rough economic news, but at least he got a good photo op (عربي) with the Egyptian football team after their African Cup of Nations win, right? Hosni and the Pharaohs. There's a joke in there somewhere. (You can also see Gamal Mubarak standing in the back of the photo.)

Al-Ahram doesn't miss an opportunity to take a shot at the Algerians: It faults the Algerian media for publishing "fabricated news" about the Egyptian team.

Egypt dominated throughout the second half: Three of its four goals came after the halfway mark, two of them with less than 15 minutes to play.

Hosny Abd Rabo notched the first goal for Egypt at the 39-minute mark with a feint that sent the Algerian goalkeeper in the wrong direction. Forward Mohamed Zidan scored at the 65-minute mark with a high kick from the corner of the area. The third goal came from defender Mohamed Abdel-Shafy, at the 81-minute mark, scoring on a pass from Zidan.

By the fourth goal -- by Mohamed "Gedo" Nagy -- Algeria was three men down, thanks to a slew of red cards.

A strong performance for the Egyptian team, by all accounts, aided by sloppy play from the Algerian side. Now we wait to see how the fans react: I'm sure Cairo will celebrate tonight -- and hopefully things will be quiet in Algiers and Angola.

The Egyptian and Algerian soccer teams will meet tomorrow in Luanda, Angola for a semifinal match in the African Cup of Nations -- and diplomats from both countries are working to avoid a repeat of the violence that followed the last Egypt-Algeria match.

There were some amusing reports on Thursday that the Iranian national football association accidentally sent a New Year's greeting to its Israeli counterpart. The slightly perplexed Israelis responded with a message that wished "all of the good people in Iran a happy new year."

The response from Iran was not so light-hearted: Mohammad-Mansour Azimzadeh, the head of the football association's foreign relations department, was forced to resign today, according to state-run Press TV. The association's president has expressed "deep remorse" over the incident.

Here's a question I've been mulling the last few days during moments when I haven't been chained to a separate piece of "real journalism" that I hope to be wrapping up today: Will Egyptians root for the United States in the World Cup?

As many of you undoubtedly know, FIFA held its random draw for the Cup's first round on Friday, and America found itself in a group with Algeria, as well as Slovakia and England.

Given the anger we're hearing from Egypt over how its fans were allegedly treated during a Cup-qualifying playoff game with Algeria in Khartoum, and the resulting diplomatic fallout, I wonder if Egyptian soccer fans will decide to support America, the villain of the Middle East, over their Arab - or at least African - neighbors to the West?

What say you, readers?

Egypt will not return its ambassador to Algeria until the latter apologizes and pays compensation (عربي), legal affairs minister Mufid Shehab said today.

Shehab said Egypt is not interested in permanently cutting diplomatic ties with its North African neighbor, but demanded a public apology and compensation for injuries and for damage to Egyptian businesses. He also said his government has submitted a dossier to FIFA detailing violence against Egyptian citizens.

I just got done reading a piece by Shaden Shehab in Al-Ahram that does some news analysis on the November Algeria-Egypt soccer match that has resulted in weeks of violence, protests and political grandstanding.

Shehab's article would be a funny bit of Arab-world satire if it wasn't real: He quotes prominent satellite television talk-show host Emadeddin Adib as saying that the alleged attacks by Sudanese on Egyptians who visited Khartoum for the match were part of a "conspiracy" organized by a "Gulf state."

Shehab follows that up by writing that "it is no secret that the Algerian newspaper Ech- Chorouk, which has taken an insulting editorial line towards Egypt, is financed by Qatar."

British authorities confirmed that five Britons whose racing yacht had strayed into Iranian waters had been released by that country, the New York Times reports. The five men were sailing their 60-foot yacht from Bahrain to Dubai for the start of a race when they suffered propeller problems, the AP reported.

Iran's treatment of the British sailors differs markedly from their approach to three American hikers who were arrested in July after apparently mistakenly walking into Iranian territory. The hikers have been imprisoned since then and currently face espionage charges, despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's assertion that "there is no evidence to support any charge whatsoever.

Several thoughtful readers passed along this story (عربي) from Libya's state-run JANA news agency. A rough translation:

JANA has learned that the leader of the revolution, the president of the African Union, will work to close the rift between the brotherly countries of Egypt and Algeria caused by the recent football match between the two. The Arab League's secretary general, Amr Moussa, made a telephone call on Monday and appealed for intervention to heal the rift within Arab-Arab relations.

The Egypt-Algeria mediation will cap off a busy month for the Libyan dictator, whose most recent act of diplomacy was to urge 500 beautiful Italian women to convert to Islam. (One of them reportedly accepted, so he's batting .002.)

The Egyptian government seems determined to milk the "Egypt-Algeria crisis" for at least a few more days of outrage.

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports (عربي) that demonstrations continued in Cairo yesterday; protesters demanded that Egypt cut its diplomatic relations with Algeria and expel Algerian students studying in Egypt.

An argument also broke out in parliament, where several committees -- Arab affairs, youth, and defense -- were meeting to discuss the "crisis." Lawmakers blamed each other for failing to protect Egyptians living in Algeria, and in Khartoum, where last week's final qualifying match was played.

Michael Slackman is being sensational when he compares yesterday's riot at the Algerian embassy to the Egyptian bread riots of the 1970s. The bread riots involved hundreds of thousands of people; hundreds were killed, and the government had to deploy the army to quell the protests.

Yesterday's riot, while ugly, involved a few hundred people, and a few dozen injuries, mostly to police officers. Al-Masry Al-Youm puts the numbers slightly higher (عربي): One thousand protesters clashing with roughly 5,000 police officers.

But Slackman's larger point is interesting: The Egyptian government, rather than trying to quell the anti-Algerian sentiment in the country, is stoking it.

First, to our readers in Egypt, Algeria and Sudan: If you have any stories about the security situation this week, we'd love to hear from you, in the comments section or via e-mail.

Al-Jazeera reports that a small group of protesters, throwing stones and homemade firebombs, tried to attack the Algerian embassy (عربي) on Brazil Street in Cairo's normally-peaceful Zamalek district. They were repelled by a large group of riot police, and the embassy is now cordoned off. Several police vehicles were reportedly destroyed in the clash; no word on injuries.

A pair of football matches seem to have turned into a serious international incident between Egypt and Algeria.

The Egyptian foreign ministry recalled its ambassador to Algeria today. The ministry also summoned Algeria's ambassador to Egypt, Abdul Qader Haggar, for the second time this week. Officials "informed him of... Egypt's extreme displeasure against the assaults on Egyptian citizens who went to Khartoum to support the Egyptian team."

(Updated below) Algeria edged out the Egyptian squad to secure its third trip to the World Cup.

The lone goal came in the 40th minute: Antar Yahia blasted a close-range shot past the Egyptian goalkeeper, Essam el-Hadary. The Egyptian team had been the favorite to win today's qualifier, which was played under tight security in Khartoum.

Thousands of Algerian and Egyptian football fans -- and tens of thousands of Sudanese police -- are in Khartoum for tomorrow's World Cup qualifier between the two rivals.

The Algerian government offered discounted tickets to fans, according to AFP; Sudanese airport authorities expect more than 60 planes carrying fans from the two countries, mostly from Algeria. (Thousands of Egyptian fans took buses instead of planes; others already work in Sudan.)

Via Twitter, a cool photo of some Egyptian fans celebrating in the streets after their World Cup qualifier win over Algeria tonight:

This brings back memories. I was in Cairo during the African Cup in early 2006; I went to a couple of qualifiers (Egypt-Morocco and Libya-Ivory Coast), and I spent the night wandering Cairo with friends after Egypt won the finals. It seemed like the entire city was out in the streets. The celebration outlasted us, in fact; we called it a night around 2:30 a.m.

The tournament happened to coincide with the Muhammad cartoon riots, which made for some slightly absurd scenes -- men burning Danish flags next to guys selling Al-Ahly jerseys. Good times.

The streets of Cairo are loud with celebration tonight, after the country's soccer squad beat Algeria 2-0 in the waning seconds to force a one-game playoff on Wednesday that will determine which team qualifies for the 2010 World Cup.

You'll recall that Egyptian hooligans attacked Algeria's team as it arrived by bus to its Cairo hotel on Thursday. Video showed two or three Algerian players bleeding from the head and face; one held what looked like broken pieces of concrete in his hands - apparently what the mob was throwing.

Five members of the Algerian football team were injured by an angry mob in Cairo yesterday, just 36 hours ahead of a World Cup qualifier that now might be canceled.

The Algerian players were getting off a bus outside their hotel when a group of 200 Egyptians surrounded the bus and started throwing stones. Two players, Khaled Lemmuchia and Rafiq Hallish, were struck on the head, according to an Algerian member of parliament traveling with the team.

(Egyptian police, true to form, insisted that nobody had been hurt.)

Like grass growing through cracks in a city sidewalk, the sport (art?) of surfing is maintaining a tentative toehold in Gaza, reports Brian Calvert of the National.