Egypt skipper Ahmed Hassan has disclosed that the African champions aim to trounce bitter regional rivals Algeria when the two clash in a World Cup qualifying match in Cairo in November.
Algeria lead Group 3 of the World Cup qualifiers with ten points from four matches and host Rwanda next month, while Egypt are three points behind and face a difficult away trip to Zambia.
After Algeria pipped Zambia 1-0 earlier this month in Blida, Karim Saifi predicted that Algeria‘s match in Egypt in November will be for tourism, not for competition, as the Desert Foxes will have qualified for the World Cup before the game.
However, Ahmed Hassan told Algerian newspaper Al Nahar, "Yes, they will come for tourism besides the match as we are generous people, but before that we will beat them 5-0 as we did before."
Hassan admitted that they did not initially consider Algeria as a big threat to their World Cup aspirations, rather their focus was on Zambia.
"We didn’t consider Algeria as our main rivals. We paid more attention to Zambia… then after we drew with Zambia and then we were beaten by Algeria, everything changed…but we will focus and fight till the end."
