CAIRO: Manuel Jose launched a fresh attack on the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) as he accused anonymous officials of instructing referees to favor Al-Ahly s arch-rivals Zamalek. The Al-Ahly manager said in a recent interview that Zamalek players who had a caution before the Cairo derby were not shown any yellow cards intentionally to be available for the Egyptian League s most important fixture. Refereeing errors occur and Al-Ahly can win a game thanks to a mistake from the referee, Jose said in an interview with Al-Ahram Al-Riyadi. But [on the day of the match] before the Cairo derby, Zamalek played Harras Al-Hodoud and it was obvious that there were instructions that their players shouldn t receive yellow cards. Tarek Al-Sayed took up his shirt in celebration after scoring, a behavior he should have been booked for, but a yellow card didn t appear. Abdul-Halim Ali beat an opponent just in front the assistant referee and he also escaped without a warning. This means that there were instructions being followed. The EFA didn t comment on the accusations. Jose was at the center of an earlier dispute with the EFA when he took off his jacket and started unbuttoning his shirt in protest over refereeing during his side s 4-0 league victory over Harras Al-Hodoud. Despite he was handed an EGP 50.000 fine and a four-match ban by the EFA, he emerged unscathed due to the full support from Al-Ahly administration. In the interview with the sports weekly magazine, Jose also said that the penalty after Al-Hodoud game was exaggerated. They waited such an incident to punish me, it is obvious there is an organized campaign against us, he said. The Portuguese ignited an internal crisis within the club when he expelled former Al-Ahly and Egypt goalkeeper and EFA current deputy chairman Ahmed Shobeir from the team s dressing room, where he went to get treatment for a foot injury.
