Masr SC

ZED Sports set out in 2020 to build something Egyptian football rarely produces on purpose: a club engineered around a youth academy rather than around a first team assembled to win now. The company, owned by Naguib Sawiris, bought a modest Giza side called FC Masr, itself founded in 2009 by Masr for Football SAE, and renamed it ZED FC. The academy work was recognised quickly — Globe Soccer Awards named it the best in Africa in 2021 and the best in the Middle East in 2023 — and it has produced players who went straight into the first team rather than being sold on.

The climb through the divisions did the rest. ZED FC won the Fourth Division in 2012–13, the Third Division the following season, then took the Second Division twice, in 2018–19 and again in 2022–23, each promotion arriving without a season wasted in between. Mohamed Magdy, known as Afsha, became the player supporters point to from that run, a midfielder who carried the same growth into the Egypt national team. The nearest the club has come to a trophy was the 2023–24 Egyptian Cup final, lost 1–0.

Home games are played at the Cairo Military Academy Stadium, which holds around 28,500 people, in yellow and blue. There is no fixed rival attached to the club by history, but sharing the Cairo and Giza area with Al Ahly, Zamalek and Pyramids FC means every derby weekend now carries a newer, smaller name into rooms long dominated by the other three.