Al Ahly have submitted an official complaint to the Confederation of African Football over the “unacceptable behaviour” of Group B opponents Al Hilal after their 1-0 defeat on the weekend.
The CAF Champions League record champions started their group stages with a defeat to Florent Ibenge’s side, which puts them under pressure ahead of their double header with Mamelodi Sundowns.
However, the Egyptian giants were not impressed with several incidents that happened during and around the game, and announced they sent an official complaint to CAF.
“Al Ahly filed an official complaint to the Confederation of African Football (CAF) on the incidents that happened before, during and after the game against Al Hilal of Sudan on Saturday 18 February 2023 in Matchday 2 of the CAF Champions League group stage,” the club said via a statement on its website.
“Al Ahly highlighted in the complaint the unacceptable behaviour of Al Hilal officials, staff and fans towards our delegation and our players.
“Al Ahly urged the governing body of African football to take actions against this unacceptable behaviour.”
On their Egyptian-twitter account, they also listed the incidents, which you can read below as translated into English.
1) During the only training session of our team at the Blue Jewel Stadium last Friday, some Al Hilal fans stormed the stadium and threw fireworks at the players in the presence of a representative of CAF, who examined the thrown objects and wrote down the incident in his report.
2) Despite a sufficient decision to hold the match without a public presence, due to the lack of safety conditions in this stadium and informing Al-Ahly Club of that, Al-Hilal did not abide by this decision and allowed more than a thousand spectators from its fans to attend the match, nor did it commit to providing safe and decent means of transportation for our team.
3) The Al-Ahly players’ dressing room was flooded with sewage water after the match.
4) When the medical staff of the Al-Hilal team came to treat one of its players during the match, a member of this staff assaulted Mohamed Abdel-Moneim with one of the medical tools, and as a result, the match referee showed him a red card, and he was required to leave the stadium permanently, but he insisted on staying on the bench [among] Al-Hilal’s substitutes until the end of the match, and he started insulting our goalkeeper, Mohamed El-Shennawy, and tried to assault him while he was leaving after the end of the match.
5) A member of the administrative staff of Al-Hilal team assaulted our player Ali Lotfi, and another of them assaulted our player Hamdi Fathi in a scene far from all sports ethics.
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6) Al-Hilal did not provide safety for our team, and its fans who were present in the stadium, in violation of a sufficient decision, transgressed against the head of the Al-Ahly club delegation and the Egyptian embassy staff in Sudan, and assaulted our players as they left the stadium and in the corridor leading to the dressing rooms.
Al Ahly also claimed they already received a similar treatment during a clash in February 2020 and have demanded “urgent intervention” from CAF.
Group B leaders, Sundowns, who have collected two wins in their first two games, will still need to travel to Sudan to face Al Hilal themselves.
