After a solid preparation, Egypt's squad finally is on its way to Slovakia. This season's World Cup will be the hardest challenge this country ever had, but Coach Fairness tries to stay optimistic, even if his stars are injured or in a bad shape:
First, there's Sulayman Yousef, the captain, the topscorer and the best rebounder of this team. The PF didn't show much of his class against teams like Chile or Spain, two teams which Misr will meet in the 1st Round. For him, it’s the 4th week in a row with a shape of 7, what’s a huge pity for this team.
Then, there’s El-Ibrahim, best Center in Africa and one of the youngest 260k+ players in the BuzzerBeater world. On Saturday night he had to go off the floor after just 4 minutes – now he’s injured for two weeks. He can’t help the team now for at least three weeks, huge loss for Egypt. Fairness: “With Yousef in bad shape and El-Ibrahim out with a long lasting injury, we’ve got some problems in the frontcourt. However, we’ve got some players that get their big chance now.”
The big questions is: Who’s gonna step up now?! On Center, there are guys like Yousif, Nasser and Saigh, on PF they’ve got Bdeir and the young Bilal Issa. Fairness: “Many guys will have to show what they can early in their career – Arabi, Ibn-Osman and Saigh.”
Another question is, how Fairness is going to react to the recent situation. Trying to involve the outside shooting of Hamdan, Hossein, Utt and Arabi in Motion or RnG? Take the pressure off the interior guys with a Princeton? We’ll see how his decision will look like in the end.
World Cup Tip-Off vs. Hong Kong: 18.00 in Slovakia.