Egypt are through to the second round of the Olympic games in London, but the national team are set to lose a huge asset in games to come.
Emad Meteb, the Egyptian striker, has announced his retirement from international football once Egypt’s journey in the Olympics comes to an end. This decision comes after tons of criticizing from the Egyptians to Meteb for his display against New Zealand in the second game of the group stages. Talking to Al Ahly TV, Meteb states his frustration regarding the criticism he’s been getting, and he claims that he accepts any sorts of criticism but if it is on his performance in a match, and claims that people took it too far by criticizing every aspect of his life, even those that don’t have to do with football!
Emad Meteb declaring international retirement on Al Ahly TV after the Olympics:
I have criticized Meteb for his display against New Zealand, but people are taking the criticism way too far, by stating that Meteb is an awful football player and that he doesn’t deserve to be wearing the Egyptian shirt. People forget that this same player has scored the goal that made Egypt play against Algeria in the playoffs for a spot in the 2010 World Cup. People have been way too harsh on Meteb just because he had two bad performances in the Olympics and forget that Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo had a horrible world cup and are still considered to be the best players in the world today. Fernando Torres also had not only one bad tournament, but his club form since his move to Chelsea has been very poor, and people still consider him as a world class striker, and he proved that in the Euros.
Meteb struggles when he plays as a lone striker upfront and we saw the best of him when Flavio partnered him in attack when he played in Al Ahly, yet managers still decide to play him as a lone striker which isolates him completely. In my opinion this was the main reason why Meteb had a bad game against New Zealand was because he was a lone striker, and we saw that he played well in the second half of the game against Belarus in the last game of the group stages when Hani Ramzi decided to partner him with Marwan Mohsen upfront. I was curious to know how well Meteb performed for the national team, and found that Meteb scored 34 goals in 68 games for Egypt which is a 0.5 ratio for goals per game. There was another source that said that Meteb scored 33 goals in 69 games which is a ratio of 0.48 goals/game.
I compared Meteb’s statistics to the best strikers of the world and I was surprised to the results I found:
Emad Meteb: 0.48-0.50
Arjen Robben: 0.283
Cristiano Ronaldo: 0.39
Lionel Messi: 0.37
Robin Van Persie: 0.43
Raul: 0.43
Fernando Torres: 0.32
Mario Gomez: 0.44
Zine el Din Zidane: 0.29
Diego Maradona: 0.37
Wayne Rooney: 0.38
Hossam Hassan: 0.41
Mohamed Zidan: 0.3
Lukas Podolski: 0.44
Karim Benzema: 0.31
Thierry Henry: 0.41
Sergio Aguero: 0.42
Alessandro Del Piero: 0.3
Fransesco Totti: 0.16
Filippo Inzaghi: 0.44
Michael Owen: 0.45
Diego Forlan: 0.375
Radamel Falcao: 0.31
Zlatan Ibrahimovic: 0.41
Samuel Etoo: 0.49
Alan Shearer: 0.48
Ian Rush: 0.38
Jurgen Klinsmann: 0.44
Marco Van Basten: 0.41
Rivaldo: 0.46
Robbie Fowler: 0.27
Andriy Shevchenko: 0.43
Henrik Larsson: 0.35
Roberto Baggio: 0.48
If we take that Meteb has a 0.48 goal/game ratio the only player that we’d remove from the list is Samuel Eto’o, and he’d have the same ratio as Alan Shearer and Roberto Baggio. You might argue that Meteb plays against easier opponents than most of the people stated above, but the pitches that Meteb plays on most of the time are awful and require a lot of skill to play well on and score. Imagine you’re a striker that gives his all to your country and you have a better goals/game ratio than all of the names above and you still get the stick for having a bad tournament, how would you feel?
In my opinion, I think Egypt would lose a lot with the retirement of Meteb from international football.
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