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We are taking a little break from the European expansion polls before we go to next stages.

In the meantime, we will sort out the non-European expansion. This year the 'Executive Committee has decided' :) that it is high time we added an African league to our list of domestic leagues. So our 23/24 world expansion will be limited to Africa only.

There will be just one poll with 5 leagues. According to CAF 5-yr ranking, which is the basis for CAF CL berths distribution, there are top-5 leagues with a clearly superior points toll compared to 6.-plus leagues.

So the poll options will be:

Morocco 194, Egypt 176, Algeria 115, Tunisia 113 and Rep.South Africa 109.5

The African poll will be coming up in a few days but you can already start thinking of your preferred choice... The poll will stay open for 10 instead of usual 7 days.

Poll open. Pls vote!
Will stay open for the next 10 days.

A very interesting poll with no clear favourite.

We're half way there! 5 days remaining to vote for our first African league expansion.

Apparently no Tunisia fans out there so far, hope the Tunisia button is not broken :) Not that bad for admins afterall as TUN L1 is the only league out of the 5 with an irregular season pattern.

Two days left for voting! The competition is quite tight, so the more people vote, the more representative the result will be.

One day left

Egypt, Rep.South Africa and Morocco all within 2 votes margin.

It would be nice if we had a more decisive result for the Winner than as it stands now :)

One African league only will be added next season.

In case of a draw, the league with the better 5-yr CAF Ranking will win unless you feel it would be fairer to wait for a 'golden vote'.

Interesting thing, 9 days of voting now and still not a single vote for Tunisia!

Very interesting vote/result this one Michal...I as you know don´t play any football leagues or cups these days...or ever really,well.. thats not quite true with the cups i was a a champion or suggester for including the scottish and french i remember taking part in them initially as well as others but championships like euros,copa america,etc aside i am a non participant...soooo i normally vote for the good of the game and its users..at least in my view. ,).

With that in mind,I know traditioanlly there has been a non surprising but a reality of lack of footy games in the northern hemsiphere summer for the guys to play,so when possible i go for those leagues in the votes that take part in those fallow periods...in this case South Africa.
In previous votes I went for the faroe islands for this reason as well as a thank you to them for getting out avid gamers through covid as one of the few leagues that continued to run in that initial period...belarus too but of course that is a different story.

An interesting observation about the EGY league. They seem to be playing all over the week. See the March/April program this season for instance. In other words, on any randomly picked day you have a good chance to come across an EGY league fixture.

South Africa plays from August to May.
But Egypt plays in our summer.

Sergey, i think it’s the other way round ?

Ahhhhh , forgive me sergey , I’m sorry you are quite right about South Africa , I’m sure I read it was the opposite somewhere

Egypt looks to be all over the place date wise to be fair.. could be a nightmare to organize .. I still think the South African league appears more appealing as we have had many South Africans on this game over the years and certainly from a British POV might be better known for the majority of players

have had or used to have? :) I am looking into the Premier League stats, which is the most popular comp by far. No South Africans there if I am correct.

Interesting, thanks for checking that it ,it actually confirms a feeling I had.
In the early days of the site/game after the initial almost totally German first years we had quite a few South and southern African players but I do sadly also remember a large majority of them rage quit over some issues or issue. We retained some initially but I guess that’s even dropped off now, that’s a pity.

Yep, Peter Horn and Co.

Iirc it was over something rather silly (but forget the details) and as a neutral..ish observer I was quite glad to see the back of them after all the work and effort Klaus and others had put in their attitude was shameless

Cite:
I am sorry but I am disgusted and raise my objection against this change in the overall standings prediction. I only saw this about 5 min ago. It is clear that more people was not aware of this. The deadline was gone last week and it is totally unfair to open the prediction due to a fault in the system. I insist that the overall prediction comp be deleted totally

Tour de France was the nail in the coffin (see my previous mystery post, this was a good-bye email I think). And specifically some changes to deadline of the GC predictions. 'Insist' was not enough :)

But first there were these Bulgarian league riots around last minute changes in the schedule. The RSA attendance decreased from 6 to 3 overnight.

They all switched to SuperBru collectively at some point.

Haha.... ahhhhh those were the days, 2012ish ? We’ve all been through so much since and the one constant is our lord Klaus allowing us to fritter away our time so delightfully.

The 'in'famous Tour de France must have been 2014 or 2015 at the latest. So probably the statute of limitations has already passed on these misdemeanors anyway...

It was all a bit silly,at least through natural selection we ended up with a better quality of players/characters over time on here.

And the Egyptian Premier League wins the poll!

The 2023/23 season started in October 2022 so probably some time around October 2023 would be the anticipated date for the 23/24 season kickoff.

Cairo, Giza and New Cairo:
Al Ahly, Ceramica Cleopatra, El Dakhleya, Future, El Mokawloon, National Bank, Pyramids, Tala'ea El Gaish, Zamalek (Giza), ENPPI (New Cairo)

Alexandria:
Haras El Hodoud, Al Ittihad, Pharco, Smouha

Other:
Aswan (Aswan), Ghazi El Mahalla (EL Mahalla El Kubra), Ismaily (Ismailia), Al Masry (Port Said)

Acc to transfermarkt, top-10 are:

(In brackets, no. of WDL divided by 100, rounded up; IMO a nice simplified visual representation of teams strength over the years, eg. 831 record for Al Ahly shows that they'd win 8 of 12 and lose just 1 of 12 games in the league)

01 El Ahly 2624pts (831)
02 Zamalek 2385 (732)
03 Ismaily 1867 (543)
04 El Masry 1554 (444)
05 Ittihad Alexandria 1397 (344)
06 El Mokawloon 1371 (344)
07 Ghazi El Mahalla 1108 (333)
08 ENPPI 867 (222)
09 Tala'ea Al Gaish 708 (222)
10 Haras El Hodoud 611 (222)

The top 2 on that list to me are the stand out names ... (ones I have heard of) .. although Pyramids is a stand up name ;).

....forgive me.


Without checking,as I am using my wifes laptop and its a nightmare...i presume its not far removed from the Scottish or Spanish leagues with 2 stand out teams always fighting over the trophies ?

Bad news, no. 3 Ismaily (I think this is the third one that I can recollect the name of) are currently sitting in the relegation zone.

It would be a pity then if the inaugural EPL season on here would just miss on participation of the 3rd best team in Egypt over the years. Still have a good chance of staying up though, looking at the table and points.

Ismaily also played twice in the CAF CL final, winning once. The only other teams outside Big-3 to have played in the final were Ghazi El Mahalla (they lost).

So now that we know all the teams, where did Mohamed Salah start his career?

El Mokawloon is the answer. Played there 2010-12 before moving to Europe for good.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't finish the 2012 season as the league was suspended and then called off due to the Port Said Stadium tragedy. So these sad pictures of 74 people dying after fan riots must be his last traumatic recollection from his local league days (even though El Mokawloon were not playing in that game)...

So if anyone is looking for some random 'my fav team' pick before the league starts, El Mokawloon might be it! The name means 'The Contractors', they have been a part of a big local construction company (Arab Contractors, hence the name).

He comes across as the type of guy who may well end his career back in Egypt rather than the usual suspects league/country wise.

About your pyramids joke, I think there's another good one in The Last of us. Not about pyramids though.

About a scarecrow. That he was given some award. Because he was out-standing in his field...

Will Livingston what an Icon :=)

Yeah,
Living Stone. A Rock. An Icon. Got it!

Oooooh....you´re good.....or should that be bad.

It doesn't matter how much you push the envelope. It'll still be stationary

It really is a high quality product the TV series,I am trying to avoid as many spoilers as I can but with a daughter who was addicted to the games a few years back it's tough...thankfully there are some changes here and there to keep even her on her toes.

We should stop there. Spoilers are something that can make tens of people leave this site forever... :)

Especially if they are from Southern Africa .