By the time the 2018 FIFA World Cup\u2122 rolled around, veteran goalkeeper Essam El Hadary was well into his fifth decade, had banked more than 150 Egypt caps, and won a wealth of trophies at club and international level.<\/p>\n
The four-time Africa Cup of Nations champion had not yet featured on the game\u2019s greatest stage, however. Russia 2018 marked Egypt\u2019s first World Cup qualification since 1990 and El Hadary revealed how his hunger to grace the global showpiece had kept his competitive fires burning.<\/p>\n
\u201cSetting targets is very important in my life,\u201d El Hadary, then aged 45, told The Guardian ahead of the competition. \u201cMaybe I could have said, \u2018That\u2019s enough\u2019 if I had participated at a previous World Cup \u2013 but I felt there was something missing without a World Cup appearance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Making that appearance would etch El Hadary name into the tournament\u2019s history books. Another goalkeeper, Colombia\u2019s Faryd Mondragon, had previously had the distinction of being the World Cup\u2019s oldest player, having competed at Brazil 2014 three days after his 43rd birthday.<\/p>\n
Even after El Hadary was named in Egypt\u2019s Russia 2018 squad, it appeared as though the South American may hold on to that record. Egypt\u2019s opening two World Cup games came and went with the Al Ahly legend an unused substitute \u2013 he watched from the bench as the Pharaohs were edged out 1-0 by Uruguay and then beaten by 3-1 by the host nation.<\/p>\n
El Hadary would have his moment, however. Named in the starting line-up for his nation\u2019s final group match against Saudi Arabia, he surpassed Mondragon and became the oldest player ever to feature at the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Aged 45 years and 161 days, the man nicknamed \u2018The High Dam\u2019 \u2013 after Egypt\u2019s Aswan Dam \u2013 rose to the occasion at Volgograd Arena. While the Pharaohs were beaten 2-1, their evergreen keeper produced a spectacular first-half penalty stop from Fahad Al Muwallad, becoming the first African to save a spot-kick at the finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany predicted I\u2019d get on for the last few minutes of a match, but I wanted to start one,\u201d said El Hadary, whose gloves from the Saudi Arabia game were later displayed at FIFA Museum in Zurich.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was mentally focused and wanted to prove that I was there on merit and not because of some special favour from the coach. After the Saudi game kicked off, there wasn\u2019t a sense of \u2018mission accomplished\u2019 because my ambition that day, just as it was right throughout my career, was to perform to my best. I was proud to become the oldest player to take part in the World Cup and the first African goalkeeper in the history of the tournament to save a penalty.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By the time the 2018 FIFA World Cup\u2122 rolled around, veteran goalkeeper Essam El Hadary was well into his fifth decade, had banked more than 150 Egypt caps, and won a wealth of trophies at club and international level. The four-time Africa Cup of Nations champion had not yet featured on the game\u2019s greatest stage, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1018763,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20966],"tags":[9648,27192],"class_list":["post-1018762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fifa-news","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1018762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1018763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1018762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1018762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1018762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}