El Hadary!

Day -498. WorldCup2018

Essam El Hadary. If you haven't read my many mentions of that name over the last couple of weeks remember it now. The Egyptian goalkeeper is 44 years old, was his country's third choice goalkeeper, came into Egypt's first match after the Number 1 suffered an injury and Number 2 didn't recover from a pre-tournament injury and didn't concede a goal in that first match, or the second and third and not in the quarterfinal either. He was beaten today in the semifinal against Burkina Faso but was the hero in the penalty shoot out which Egypt won to make it through to Sunday's final.

El Hadary could win his fifth Afcon and Egypt their eighth title, the most by any country. He saved two penalties today and that would make any goalkeeper a hero let alone the 44 year old on a fairytale run. To make the today's story even more interesting, maybe even comical, is that the first penalty El Hadary saved was Burkina Faso's fourth taken by their twenty year old goalkeeper. Just imagine that. How often does a goalkeeper take a penalty? And here was the kid thinking he could get one over the veteran and, boom! Saved. Watch the video. It wasn't a badly hit penalty.

You can not see Egypt not winning the whole thing now.