I’d enjoyed watching a couple of matches in a flash Arab café in Edgware Road and as I approached it yesterday afternoon, I could see a small crowd outside trying to get in and so I joined them. These were Egypt fans as their flags and chevrons on their cheeks made clear. Several staff members were blocking the entrance as punters made sporadic attempts to burst through. One guy managed to force his way in after much squeezing and shouting but he worked there. After the manager had repeatedly bellowed that the place was full and nobody else was getting in, I headed down the road to see if another venue was available. I spotted one café with the telly on showing that the teams were lining up for the national anthems but the guy loitering at the door said, “Hello!” and in reply to my request to watch the game and have a few drinks, he told me that it was food and drinks only; there was plenty of space there. I headed back up the road and was about to board a bus to Bayswater, an area very popular with Arabs, to see what was available there when I remembered Sobs’ words that Sunderland fans can get into places where a draught couldn’t and so I turned back for one final reconnoitre.

I noticed a couple of blokes outside Abu Ali’s Lebanese Café on the corner of George Street sitting in a certain posture that told me that they could only be watching a telly inside there. Sure enough the game was on and having missed the first six minutes I took a seat at a corner table by the window. There was one smallish T.V. high on the opposite wall and the place was full of Arab football fans while the hubbly-bubbly fans were sitting outside. Having ordered an orange-juice I focused on the screen and the first thing I saw was a great shot from Egypt’s number 8 Hosny. Then Cameroon dominated for a couple of minutes before Egypt stormed back with two great efforts on goal. That pretty much set the pattern for the rest of the game as it went from end to end with loads of great headers and long-distance shots from both teams with some excellent goalkeeping from Kameni for Cameroon and El Hadari for Egypt as well as plenty of robust defending all round.

As the screen was small and my eyesight isn’t that great these days it wasn’t till around the 25 th minute that I confirmed that number 9 Zidan wasn’t on the pitch for Egypt – he’d been excellent in the first encounter between these sides which Egypt had won 4-2. I asked the guys sitting at my table where Zidan was and understood that he was on the bench. Even without him, number 19 Zaky was looking very sharp as was 22 Abou Terika. I was making notes about the game and one of the guys asked me what I was doing so I told him I was writing a column for my team’s website. When he learnt I was a Sunderland fan, he immediately piped up, “You had a good result yesterday, 2-0.” I was impressed. His mate said, “Roy Keane” and nodded sagely. The first guy was from Iraq and said, “We have a good team but no country” (insert a joke here about our national side according to taste) and predicted that Blackburn would beat Arsenal tonight.

Eto’o had a great run and shot just after the half-hour mark but he wasn’t that prominent really. He was lucky to still be in the tournament after seeming, ahem, to nut an opponent in the Tunisia match. The main man for me in the Cameroon side was number 4 Rigobert Song, whom I confused with his namesake Alex in my last report. He was very strong in defence and was an inspiration to his team-mates. Unfortunately it was largely his mistake in the 76 th minute that led to the winning goal. He failed to clear a fairly routine ball on the left angle of the area and Zidan, who’d finally come on fifteen minutes earlier, pounced on it. A tremendous tussle ensued between the two of them with Zidan ending up on the deck before immediately getting up again and crossing the ball to Abou Terika, who coolly slotted it into the bottom right-hand corner. The café went berserk. Typically, a few minutes later Song was up the other end and had a great header that just went over the top. Incidentally, as you may know, Abou/Abu is an honorific title meaning ‘father of’ so if you feel an Arab mood coming on, you can insist on being called Abou Colin or whatever your eldest child is called.

More and more punters had been drifting in during the game and unlike that other swankier place that hadn’t let me in, most of the customers were only having one extremely slow tea or Coke. Quite a few lads just stood inside near the door and didn’t purchase anything. There was no pressure on them from the staff and a waiter merely asked them to keep the aisle clear. My strawberry flavoured can of Moussy non-alcoholic beer was much tastier than it sounds. In the 85 th minute the Iraqi lad got up and left announcing that it would end 1-0 and he was right. Egypt deserved to win it, especially on their second-half performance. The core of the side play for Al-Ahly in Egypt and this has no doubt helped their cohesion. I felt sorry for Cameroon, who unsurprisingly looked gutted after battling all the way to the final whistle. El Kameni and Zidan climbed up and sat on top of the goalposts and soon many of their team-mates were wearing T-shirts emblazoned with ‘Egypt Africa Cup of Nations Winners 2008’.

I had to have a walk back to the big café down the road to see how they were celebrating and in the street there was a good deal of whistling, chanting, tooting and a bit of racing along hanging out of car windows. I passed a guy with a drum who shouted to his mate, “We’ve won the cup, bruv” in a strong London accent.

I think it’s been a great tournament with every match I’ve seen being end-to-end stuff most of the time and ninety-nine-goals being scored along the way. I was disappointed to see that today’s Metro only gave the final about three column inches. Any fan of football would’ve enjoyed these games and one thing’s for sure -African football is a force to be reckoned with. There were over fifty U.K.-based players involved in this tournament so we already know many of the main personalities but the next World Cup, in South Africa of course, could well be the stage for an African national side to really make their mark. On this form Egypt are the likeliest candidates though Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Ghana aren’t far behind them.

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