A moment’s loss of concentration cost Egypt the game

Egypt U-23 manager Hany Ramzy put on a brave face and chose to look at the positives from his side’s 3-2 defeat to Morocco in the U-23 CAF U-23 Championship semi-final played in Marrakech. In the first ten minutes Morocco were two up and according to Ramzy, “We had a poor start and really not in the game in the opening ten minutes. Morocco surprised us and everyone for that matter with that kind of start. l had to get my players to put that difficult period behind them and you saw that when did, we were the better team in that match” said Ramzy. “ In the second half we dropped focus again and they scored a third goal but we came back strongly and could have equalized but it wasn’t to be.” The former senior team player Ramzy lamented the lack of accuracy in front of goal. “We created some fine chances and could have scored more goals. Infact we almost got the equalizer and hit the post a few times. So once we recovered mentally from going behind we played some good football. This gives me hope and positive expectations ahead of our match against Senegal for the third place. These boys want to go to London 2012 Olympic Games and the Senegal match will be more like a second final on the 10th here in Marrakech. We played Senegal in a preparatory match for this tournament and they are a tough side so l expect a difficult match but we will put up another solid football display like we did tonight and hopefully come out successful ”.   Ramzy went on to say “ Apart from some work that he and his staff will have to do on their team, mainly physiological motivation he is looking forward to the break before their last match. “Hopefully we will get rid of the injuries and tiredness and will be ready for Senegal.”  Our performance tonight had a number of positives which l would like us to build on for the next match so congratulations to Morocco and as for us we live to fight another day” concluded Ramzy