An ‘unimaginable feeling’
{mb_sdlf_jugador_SDLF-jugador_frase-destacada}Ahmed Elsawy is over the moon after receiving the call from the Egyptian U18 squad.
Ahmed Elsawy has always had his feet on the ground. Now football is his life, but as a child he did not dream of reaching professional football. Everything changed when he signed his first contract with El-Entag El-Harby, one of the best teams in Egypt, currently in the Premier League of the African country. “Then I felt that I wanted to dedicate myself to football and that I had to start working hard to achieve it.”
“That’s how I started to improve little by little”, recalls the left winger, who decided to travel to Barcelona to be able to face high level rivals. You can also play against great teams in my country, but there aren’t more than seven or eight. In Spain it’s different, because here there are many more divisions and in each of them you find clubs that are very difficult to overcome”.
After a season at Marcet’s High Performance Academy, Ahmed changed the way he played. “What’s evolved the most is my mentality, the way I manage my emotions during a match. At Marcet we have a sports psychologist at our disposal and everything is more organized than in Egypt, which has been the key”.
The improvements of Ahmed did not go unnoticed in his country. “On December 31st 2018, my father called me and told me he had been contacted by the coach of the Egyptian National Team, who told him that he wanted to count on me for the next U-18 meeting”.
“The truth is that I did not expect to receive that news,” recalls the winger, who this year was able to face rivals like Athletic Bilbao, Girona, Zaragoza, Huesca or Leganés. “I think they called me because I’m in Spain, and they know that the level here is very competitive. I was so happy to receive the news… I had feelings that I never imagined I could feel”.