Beach Football: Hossam Paulo & Ahmed Temsah lead Egypt AFCON squad

The Egyptian National Beach Football team has revealed their squad for the 2024 AFCON, which will be held in Egypt.

With the sixth edition of the CAF Beach Soccer Africa Cup of Nations approaching, Hurghada in Egypt is preparing to host this much-anticipated continental showpiece. The countdown for the competition has officially begun.

Eight African nations will compete for the title, with the champions and runner-up securing a position in next year’s FIFA World Cup in Seychelles. This will be the first time the competition is hosted by an African nation.

The competition will consist of two groups, each with four teams. As part of Group A, Egypt will compete against Morocco, Tanzania, and Ghana in the first round of the tournament.

As with the previous AFCON, the Egyptian National Team will be playing for keeps. This time around, though, they will be hoping for home turf advantage, especially after finishing the 2022 edition of the competition in second place after a narrow loss in the final against Senegal, which was ultimately decided by penalties.

The Egyptian squad consists of 15 players, the three chosen goalkeepers are: Mohamed El Sayed, Ibrahim Hassan, and Ahmed Hamdy.

The rest of the squad consists of 12 outfield players: Mostafa Ahmed, Hassan Mohamed, Ahmed El Shahat, Mostafa Ali “Sasa,” Haitham Atef, Hossam Paolo, Ahmed Temsah, Abdelrahman Hassan El Shafei, Mohamed Abdelnaby “Louha,” Ahmed Soliman “Isha,” Ismail Bahgat, and Mahmoud Emad “Outy.”

Hossam Paulo and Ahmed Temsah both represented the Egyptian national football team, with the latter having 21 caps to his name in which he scored twice, playing mainly during Bob Bradley’s tenure.

On the other hand, Paulo has plied his trade before at Zamalek and Smouha and won the Egyptian Premier League Golden Boot twice during the 2014/15 and 2015/16 seasons.

Egypt’s first game of the competition will be against Ghana on Saturday, October 19th, at 3:30 PM Cairo Time.