“We agreed with the Egyptian Council for Sports on paying part of the coach’s salary and are awaiting the Olympic committee’s approval of taking care of the remaining part,” Zaher told a press conference in the EFA headquarters on Thursday.

“Nevertheless, if we fail to acquire the services of a foreign coach, we will appoint an Egyptian coach to lead the team in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing,” Zaher added.

Zaher insisted that any coaches who managed the national team in the previous period will be overlooked and said that the priority will go to coaches who weren’t involved in training national teams before.

The press conference was attended by Egypt boss Hassan Shehata and representative of the company that will sponsor Egypt’s friendly against Spain that will take place in June., Juan Garcia

“Spain boss Luis Aragones asked if they can play a friendly against Egypt in part of their World Cup preparations that will kick off in Germany on June ninth,” Zaher said.

Spain were drawn to Group Eight in the World Cup alongside Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.

“We agreed with the sponsors to bring the Spain delegation to Cairo to play another friendly by the end of 2007, we are also negotiating with England, Italy, Holland and Argentine to host a friendly in the reopening of the Borg Al-Arab stadium,” Zaher said.

“We refused to play against Spain in the beginning given the lack of preparation time for our Egyptian league schedule and for the friendly, but we agreed with the EFA to hold two training sessions by the end of April and the other on May 24th until June third.

The first training will witness the absence of the Ahli and Harras Al-Hodoud professional players given their African participation with their clubs, while the second training will include all the players with the exception of Mido, who received a six-month suspension.