The once Egyptian and African champions are on the verge of ending three successive seasons without winning any major silverware, leaving football pundits wondering what could be the solution to return Zamalek to their winning ways.
Zamalek’s continuous failures have caused critics to call on French manager Henri Michel to be axed, the club’s board of directors to be removed, and players to be punished.
But such “solutions” may prove useless given the fact that Zamalek’s problems are more psychological than anything else.
The caliber of Zamalek’s players is not at question here, after all, the team has players like Hazem Emam, Abdul-Wahed Al-Sayed and Amr Zaki in their ranks, and God knows that players of less quality have helped the club win top tournaments.
It’s not the quality of the players in question at the moment, even though the Men in White do have some below-par individuals in their roster, but it’s the demolishing winning mentality that is driving the fans crazy.
The lack of spirit, commitment and inspiration has led Zamalek’s fans open fire on the players following the defeat to Al-Hilal of Sudan in the CAF Champions League and the defeat to Faisali in the ACL.
It’s time Zamalek’s players learned what it means to wear the “white jersey”, a job that is apparently worthy of the father of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud.
But there remains one approach that could help Zamalek’s players retain their good form, even though it might sound simple and naïve.
This approach would require Michel, along with some of Zamalek’s former stars, to sit the players down and make the watch some of the club’s most notorious games as to remind everyone of the duties on hand.
Recalling Zamalek’s glorious past and winning ways maybe the most efficient to eliminate the apathy embedded in this generation of players.
This approach has already proved useful with the German national team. It was used by former coach Juergen Klinsmann who took on a team of unknown players who found themselves preparing to bare the German flag at the 2006 World Cup finals on home soil.
Klinsmann sat his players, who were about to compete with the likes of Brazil, Argentina, Italy and France, and made them watch game after game for the “Mannschaft”.
After watching their country’s success in the 1954, 1974 and 1990, the Germans were inspired to an unexpected third place and bronze medal at the 2006 finals.
As simple as this approach might sound, it remains one of the roads not yet taken by Zamalek’s officials who bought numerous players, changed the coaching staff on more than one occasion and even changed the jersey itself.