Al Ittihad

Three Egyptian championships came in the space of four seasons at the turn of the 1950s, and Al-Ittihad has not added a fourth since the league took its modern shape. The Egyptian Cup came more often, six times between 1926 and 1976.

That gap between the trophy room and the present day is the shape of Al-Ittihad's story. In Alexandria they are known as Sayyid al-Balad, Masters of the City. The green and white shirts still carry that name into a league where the silverware has stopped arriving.

Continental football gave the club one of its stranger footnotes rather than a triumph: in the 1975 African Cup Winners' Cup, Al-Ittihad walked off the pitch during a match against Tonnerre Yaoundé and were disqualified for it.

Hossam Hassan's name runs through the club twice over, first as a player and later as manager. Across the city, Smouha SC provide the derby that means the most, sharpened by the fact that both clubs play out of the same Alexandria Stadium.

The club itself was formed in 1914, when Al-Haditha and the United Champions Club merged into one side, though Alexandria's footballing thread through that merger reaches back further, to a Union Club first set up in 1906.