'You can’t compare us to any other club in Egypt': FC Masar women's team target domestic and African success

On the opening day of Group B action at the CAF Women’s Champions League in Morocco on November 10, Egyptian debutants FC Masar pulled off a stunning 1-0 upset over title holders Mamelodi Sundowns. Sundowns, South Africa’s most successful women’s team, have won two of the three editions of the CAF Women’s Champions League so far – in 2021 and 2023. In 2021, FC Masar, under its current ownership, structure, and branding, didn’t even exist. Back then, the club was operating under its former name, Tutankhamun FC (Tut for short), and was going through a radical transformation after being acquired by Right to Dream, a Mansour Group-owned organisation of football academies and clubs spread across Ghana , Egypt, Denmark and the United States. Under its new ownership, a strategy was put in place for Tut, with special emphasis on its women’s team, which was rebuilt from the ground up with the main goal of making it to the CAF Women’s Champions League by 2026/27, and winning the continental showpiece by 2028/29. Rebranded to FC Masar earlier this year, the club is remarkably ahead of schedule. Not only did they make it to the CAF Women’s Champions League two years earlier than expected, they’re giving Africa’s finest a run for their money in the continent’s biggest club competition. A draw against Nigerian champions Edo Queens in their second group game meant the Egyptians needed only to avoid defeat in their final assignment, against CBE of Ethiopia, last Saturday to guarantee a place in the knockout round. They won the match 2-1, securing second place in Group B behind Edo Queens and a place in the semi-finals of Africa's premier club competition. In their first domestic season post-acquisition, 2022/23, Masar (then Tut) were initially going to compete in second division, not the Egyptian Women’s Premier League, but were promoted to top flight when a team withdrew. They placed sixth in their inaugural league campaign under the new ownership and clinched the Egyptian Cup. Last season, their second campaign as part of the Right to Dream family, Masar secured a league-and-cup double to earn themselves a place in the UNAF qualifiers, the North African qualification tournament for the CAF Women's Champions League. They placed second in the qualifying tournament behind Moroccan giants AS FAR, but with Morocco hosting the Champions League, which automatically gives AS FAR a spot in the competition, Masar made it through as UNAF runners-up. So how does an Egyptian football club become one of Africa’s best women’s teams after just two years of transformation? Mohammed Wasfy, CEO of Right to Dream Egypt, and FC Masar, says it all started by setting the strategy, and hiring the right people that would help implement it. “I think the key would be the timing of the acquisition and setting the strategy for the women’s team which happened in early 2022,” Wasfy told The National. “The owners were keen on having a women’s team and progressing that, especially with Egypt, because you could change a lot and have a positive impact through that.” A first key figure that was brought into the fold is Mariam Abouhegazy, who is the women’s sporting director at FC Masar and head of women’s and girls’ at Right to Dream Egypt. Abouhegazy played football in Egypt, worked with one of the pioneering local academies, AIMZ, and holds a Masters degree in Football Business from the Johan Cruyff Institute in Barcelona . She brought with her deep knowledge of the women’s football landscape in Egypt and recommended bringing in Ahmed Ramadan as head coach. Ramadan worked in women’s football in the United States for two decades and briefly managed the Egyptian national women’s football team in 2020. “We knew by having him, we would have an anchor and we could gravitate some of the top players to play for us and explain the project,” said Wasfy. “Every year we had certain KPIs and objectives to achieve and we were just talking about it the other day, at the moment the fact that we’re in the Champions League means we are two years ahead of schedule. “There are many factors why that happened: one was the coach, two was Mariam – having Mariam involved was crucial – three, is Right to Dream, the whole project itself, and associating the club with Right to Dream.” That connection between FC Masar and Right to Dream was what attracted coach Ramadan to the project. He met several players in the United States – at the collegiate or professional football level – who had come out of the Right to Dream Academy in Ghana and saw how the academy had transformed their lives and the lives of their families. “It was a big responsibility because the team was in third place in second division when we took over. And it was a long process to go through, especially that the players were coming from a system where they only trained and played twice a week, and they were in second division, which is a relatively weak division,” reflected Ramadan. “And we were supposed to start in second division but we got promoted to the top division when a top-flight team withdrew. “The advantage was that you were working on something from scratch, building it from the ground up. We built a new foundation to create a proper new team. “That first year, the first round of games was very difficult for us because we were working on fundamentals and were focusing on raising the level of individuals, the performance, the technique, the mindset, and the physicality of the players so they could play for 90 minutes. “We moved up their training from two to five days a week, we introduced them to proper gym training. So many steps were taken to develop the individuals over a period of six months.” Besides the work done in the gym and on the pitch, the structure around the team played a huge part. All players were given professional contracts – a rarity in Egyptian women’s football at the time – and were given enough compensation to quit their day jobs and dedicate themselves solely to football. Those still in university are well-supported by the organisation, which liaises with their schools to make sure there are no scheduling conflicts. Players that are from outside Cairo are put up in the dorms at the Right to Dream campus in Badya, where they are provided with all necessities. “You can’t compare us to any other club in Egypt,” said Amira Mohamed, one of Masar’s co-captains. “No one trains the kind of training we do, no one gets the kind of treatment that we get, from management or from the technical staff. If we go anywhere else, we won’t have what we have here. “Everything we can possibly need is made available to us at Masar. We feel close to the technical staff. We respect each other but we are encouraged to voice our opinions and talk to the management if we have any important issue to discuss. They listen to us and try to do everything possible for us. On the pitch, we train as if we’re a men’s team, not a women’s team. That sets us apart.” Mohamed, 21, is a native of Minya, a city in Upper Egypt, and joined Masar two years ago because she liked that they had a long-term vision and high ambitions for the club. She credits Ramadan’s style of coaching to their success on the pitch. “With coach Ahmed, we trained very well and started playing collective football, as opposed to the individualistic way we were used to playing,” she added. Ramadan’s philosophy is based on combining enjoyment with discipline to produce an attractive brand of football. “The joy comes from when I have the ball, and when I have the ball and I am enjoying it, that means I have to be physically prepared for that, and well-trained for that. All this has to be within a structured framework,” he explained. “Football for me is joy, and you can’t enjoy it if it’s all about long balls. Kick and run, kick and run is not fun. Sitting back and defending all the time is not fun. I don’t like that. We want to get the ball as soon as possible and keep the ball as much as we can and we create chances and score goals. That’s our plan, play attacking, attractive football. “We turned the sport from just playing, to how to win, that’s number one. Number two is: it’s not about me, it’s about all of us. The third thing is we go and we fight together. We work together as a team. And that creates discipline on the pitch and love and respect among the players. It’s a system based on fairness. When you’re fair, people respect you and will work.” Ramadan is confident Masar can defend their league crown this season, despite the introduction of new teams like Cairo giants Al Ahly and Zamalek for the first time in the Egyptian Women’s Premier League. For the past few years, CAF, the Confederation of African Football, had been putting pressure on all the major clubs in Africa to create women’s teams, threatening to revoke the continental licenses of the clubs that don’t adhere. Al Ahly and Zamalek have finally complied and are making their league debut during this 2024/25 campaign. “We knew that at one point Ahly and Zamalek would have to be in, and part of our strategy was to make sure we had the best players before they come in,” said Wasfy. “And this was the year. They came in, they were looking for players, and they tried [poaching some of our players], but none of our players wanted to go and they ended up going for tier two players in the league and they overpaid for them as well.” Transfer fees have risen in Egyptian women’s football and Wasfy believes Masar, and the way they do business, has played a big part in the current vibrant player market. “The reason why the transfers went up in women’s football was because of us,” Wasfy said. “Last season we bought a player [Hala Mostafa] from Wadi Degla and we paid 500,000 Egyptian pounds. It was a transfer record at the time and we knew by doing this we would increase the squad value and also put a premium on the talented players, on the top players in the league, and we had most of them. “Today, Al Ahly signed a player from Wadi Degla for 1.2 million pounds. “We know that Ahly have spent about 25 million pounds on women’s football, which is a big, big number.” With other teams investing in their squads and staff, Wasfy knows Masar had to make moves for this season as well. They had their eye on two 17-year-old players to bolster their squad, and they acquired them, and hired a Lebanese performance coach, Magalie Chedid. Moreover, the recent club rebrand, has strengthened ties between the club and the rest of the Right to Dream community, which spans three continents. There is lots of collaboration and integration between the different function directors at group level, and their counterparts at club level within Masar. Whether it’s on the technical side, performance, scouting, or pathways, there is a lot of data being exchanged and interpreted, which, the club hope, will help them stay ahead of the curve. “We’ve taken it up another notch as well, because our aspirations are not the domestic league, it’s to be part of the greatest in Africa, and winning the Champions League, and participate in the Fifa Club World Cup, which I think the first edition for women’s football will be in 2026. So that’s another aim we’re looking towards,” he added. Wasfy says they conducted a gap analysis between Masar and the former winners of the Champions League in order to identify what is missing for the club to conquer Africa. “We know what we need to be at that level,” he said. “Basically, adding a lot of international players that have played on a continental level. Our average age is about 21, the average age of the winning teams was 24 and a bit. So we need the experience, we need the matches, we need to be in this competition on more than one occasion to actually understand the level, to get accustomed to it, and then I think in three, four years, we could actually win the Champions League.” Rebranding Tut to FC Masar, which means ‘path’ in Arabic, is a way to align the club more with the Right to Dream identity. Right to Dream says its aim to provide pathways for its academy players, be it to clubs in Europe, or for graduates to get athletic scholarships at American universities, where they can play collegiate football. The club is also focusing on widening its fanbase, choosing an Arabic logo to directly engage with local fans. “One of our main objectives with the rebrand is to acquire fans particularly from Gen Z. And we wanted the people that liked football, the ones who cheer for Ahly and Zamalek, we wanted FC Masar to be their second favourite club,” said Wasfy. “And I think we could move into a completely different phase, where FC Masar becomes a brand, we want to collaborate with local designers in Egypt and produce merchandise and sell. “I think there’s a huge gap we could capitalise on. You could do something where you could have proper fan engagement. Given our location, it’s a new area [in west Cairo], it's still building, we could start with the university, the families that live in Badya. In 10 years they will have about 400,000 people living there, if you can acquire a lot of fans from there, it will help a lot.” Wasfy believes women’s football in Egypt is a great investment opportunity that will pay dividends in the coming years. By participating in the CAF Women’s Champions League, Masar will receive at least $150,000. That prize money can go up to $600,000 awarded to the champions and $400,000 for the runners-up. For domestic competition, the games for the top six teams in the league will be televised this season, which has increased the interest from sponsors, who would like to have their logos on the team’s jerseys. “I think there’s a big opportunity because women’s football is flying now all around the world, it’s on an upward trajectory. So the transfer fees for players is also going to increase. We already have interest in some of our players. So there is opportunity to make money out of it as well,” he added.

'You can’t compare us to any other club in Egypt': FC Masar women's team target domestic and African success

Rebranded three years after being acquired by Right to Dream, the Cairo club are already league and cup winners and making their mark in the CAF Champions League too