The Egyptian Football Association have cancelled the national team’s friendly against DR Congo, which was scheduled for the end of May.
The EFA has announced it decision to cancel the national team’s friendly match against DR Congo on the 30th of May.
The decision came after a long debate on whether the game would hurt the Egypt’s standing in the FIFA rankings, with Egypt currently seeded in Pot 1 for the upcoming 2018 World Cup qualifiers.
According to various reports, Argentinean manager Hector Cuper had insisted that the match must be played. The EFA, meanwhile, were pushing for the cancellation of the fixture, due to the belief that any result in that game would hurt Egypt’s ranking.
Egypt are currently the fifth-ranked team in Africa, just ahead of North African rivals Tunisia.
READ: Egypt risking World Cup hopes by playing Congo DR
According to these standings, Egypt would be drawn into one of five groups for the Russia 2018 world cup qualifiers as the top seed. Pot one currently contains four teams to eliminate Egypt from their last four world cup qualifiers campaigns, along with the Pharaohs themselves.
As a result, avoiding any of those four teams is a priority, and it would only happen if Egypt were to remain in Pot 1.
Egypt are set to play the final match in their African Cup of Nations qualifying campaign away to Tanzania on June 4th.
Cuper’s men will need to win the match against a Tanzania side desperate to seal unlikely qualification to the 2017 AFCON in Gabon, and hope that results elsewhere are in their favor.
Egypt all but qualified for the 2017 AFCON with a win against Nigeria at the Borg Al Arab stadium in March, and are now eyeing qualification for the World Cup finals for the first time since 1990.
