Hossam Hassan says he’s done watching this World Cup. “I told the referee that what was happening wasn’t fair,” the Egypt coach said after his team’s 3-2 collapse against Argentina. “It’s an undeserved victory for Argentina… I’ll never watch the World Cup again, because there’s no justice in this competition.”
Egypt had led 2-0 with 11 minutes left before Argentina scored three times to complete one of the tournament’s most dramatic comebacks. Hassan’s grievances ran wider than the scoreline: earlier in the match, with Egypt already 2-0 up, a goal was disallowed on VAR review that would have made it 3-0; late on, he felt a foul in the box went unreviewed. He had also objected to the referee’s identity before a ball was kicked, telling Francois Letexier that his background was the issue, and later that the Frenchman seemed to be “carrying a scar,” that he had “something to hide.” He was booked for it.
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That was the 98th minute. The referee had already shown Hassan a yellow when his twin brother, Ibrahim, Egypt’s team director, crossed the technical area to restrain him. Hossam had crossed his arms at Letexier, the gesture FIFA uses to flag racist abuse, and for a moment it looked like it might escalate. Instead Ibrahim walked the referee through it himself, then gave him a thumbs up. Crisis, for now, defused.
It’s the kind of moment that makes for a nice story about brotherly devotion: twin coaches, one calming the other under the brightest lights in football. It’s also, if you know the fuller history of the Hassans, a considerably more complicated one.
Born five minutes apart in 1966 in Helwan, south of Cairo, they joined Al Ahly’s academy together at 13. Hossam became a striker; Ibrahim a right back good enough to be picked for FIFA’s World XI three times, the only Egyptian ever selected. When a European club came calling for Hossam alone in the early ’90s, he turned it down. “I refuse to go anywhere without him… We are one soul and we are inseparable.” In 2000, when Al Ahly declined to renew Ibrahim’s contract, Hossam walked out with him, both defecting to Zamalek, the club they had spent their careers beating. Three league titles and a CAF Champions League followed.
That devotion has a harder edge that rarely makes the highlight reel. In a brawl with a Lebanese side serious enough for the army to intervene, Ibrahim saw a soldier moving to strike his brother and wrestled the rifle out of his hands. A decade later, coaching Al Masry, he assaulted a referee and insulted the home crowd in a match against MO Bejaia in Algeria. A five-year FIFA ban.
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The same instinct showed up this month in Dallas, days before the Letexier gesture. Fans, including a young child, had gathered in the team hotel’s lobby hoping for photos with the players when Ibrahim objected to how hotel security and police were handling the crowd. It became a shoving match, caught on camera. Police described the matter as resolved on the spot; Hossam later said he considered it settled.
Watch the two incidents side by side and something interesting happens: the roles reverse. In Dallas, Ibrahim couldn’t stand down. Against Argentina, he was the one pulling his brother back. It isn’t that one twin escalates and the other calms, it’s that whichever Hassan sees an injustice first is the one who moves, and the other follows to manage what happens next. They’ve been doing this since Beirut.
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That instinct never really left the pitch. Move first, defend what’s yours. It’s just found a newer target. After Egypt qualified, Hassan said, per the Guardian, that “success begins from the top of the pyramid and the officials of the state,” and that meeting the president was the reward he wanted most. A presidential message, he’s said, would be “a medal on my chest.” He’s appointed a cassation court lawyer as his official legal spokesperson, with authority to pursue “those who spread rumours… anyone who seeks to sow discord.” That mandate has already been used against a TV presenter and a pundit.
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Complaints have also gone to Egypt’s Supreme Council for Media Regulation against broadcasters who criticised the brothers, one arguing that the criticism undermined Egypt’s “official national mission.” Even Egypt’s sports minister, Ashraf Sobhy, has weighed in, telling journalists to back the coaching staff the way they’d back the country’s military and political leadership.
The brothers who once wrestled a rifle from a soldier to protect each other now have the machinery of a state doing it for them. Same instinct, different tools. And this week, in Atlanta, it found a new one: the referee.
