Tewfik Abdullah

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tewfik Abdullah (also Tawfik Abdallah and Variations, Arabic توفيق عبد الله) (Born June 23, 1897 in Cairo , Egypt ; † unknown) was an Egyptian football player who spent most of his career in England and the United States .

Career

Abdullah played as a striker at Cairo International Sports Club , also Nady El Qāhirah El Mokhtalat in Arabic, which has been known as Zamalek SC since 1952 . He was a member of the Egyptian national team that took part in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. There he was used in both games of the Egyptians. After a close 1: 2 against Italy in the first round , Yugoslavia was beaten 4: 2 in the consolation round and thus reached eighth place.

Scottish player Tommy Barbour of Derby County met Abdullah while he was stationed with the Derbyshire Yeomanry in Cairo during World War I. There he played as a half right of an Egyptian national team against a British military selection. Barbour recommended Abdullah to his club, and after he completed an audition with the reserve team in mid-September 1920 and "immensely delighted" the audience, he was signed up for a week. Abdullah thus became the second Egyptian in professional English football after Hussein Hegazi , who played for Dulwich Hamlet FC in the Isthmian League , an amateur league, and also played a game for second division Fulham FC in London in 1911 , as well as at the 1920 Olympic Games had participated. Abdullah, whose first name Tewfik soon became nicknamed Toothpick ("toothpick"), made his debut in a 3-1 home win over Manchester City on October 9, marking the opening goal for his team in the first half. This remained for Abdullah the only hit and win in a total of twelve first division games for the Rams . In the end, Derby County was relegated to penultimate. In the Second Division , in which Derby County finished twelfth, Abdullah, who was described as very ready for the ball, although a little slow, was only used three times.

For the 1922/23 season he joined the Scottish second division team Cowdenbeath FC in a small town about 30 0kilometers north-northwest of Edinburgh , which was eleventh at the end. This transfer came on the recommendation of his teammate Willie Paterson, whose father Alex Paterson was formerly a coach for the Scots. Abdullah soon broke his arm there, but otherwise played well and regularly. In retrospect, Alex Paterson described him as one of the "smartest footballers" he had ever met. At the end of the season it was initially said that he would go to America despite an offer to stay. But eventually he moved 30 0kilometers west of Cardiff -based Bridgend Town AFC to Wales, which in the Western Division Southern Football League should be 13. He played there until late February or early March 1924.

In early March 1924 he returned to England and ran there until early May for Hartlepools United in the Third Division North . There he already scored a goal in the 4-0 debut against Wrexham . After the game, it was reported that he had significantly increased the penetration of the Hartlepools storm and that he had gained significantly in weight and stamina since leaving Derby County. It was considered a "lucky find", but in the end it was only enough for the penultimate place. For Abdullah, who played a total of eleven times, there was only one goal.

As a result of the expansion of the American Soccer League for the 1924/25 season from eight to twelve teams, the steady stream of British, especially Scottish footballers to the USA increased. There the players got a job in addition to a place in the team, mostly in the factory of the owner of the team, which then brought in up to three times the three or four pounds that the British clubs usually paid per week. So Abdullah continued his career with the Providence Clamdiggers in Rhode Island . Abdullah, who was soon given the new nickname "Happy", ended the season there with 15 goals in 34 games. In 1925/26 he only got seven goals in ten games and then again on two hits in 18 games. In three years he made 62 appearances and 24 goals for his team.

Later in the 1926/27 season, he moved to the Fall River Marksmen in Massachusetts , a top team of his time, for which he resided in six games by the end of the season. With the Marksmen, where he played again with Willie Paterson, he won the National Challenge Cup in 1927 , the predecessor of the US Open Cup , but was not on the field in the final. On April 2, 1927 he was also in a selection of the ASL, which was defeated 2: 4 against the well-staffed national team of Uruguay . A week later he managed a 1-1 draw against Uruguay with the Marksmen.

For the 1927/28 season he moved to the newly founded Hartford Americans . The club withdrew from play early in the season and Abdullah only appeared eleven times for the Connecticut team. By the end of the year he played eight games for the Indiana Flooring franchise, which was relocated to the east coast metropolis as New York Nationals at the beginning of the season by the controversial entrepreneur Charles Stoneham . This was followed by a short comeback to the Marksmen where he still had two games with one goal in February 1928.

He then returned to Egypt where he was first two seasons at Al Ahly SC and then at the International Sport Club as a center forward on the ball. Possibly he was involved in one of the championships of the clubs at that time (Egyptian championship: Cairo International SC (1929, 30, 32, 34, 40); Al-Ahly (1928, 31)). With Al-Ahly he won the Sultan Hussein Cup in 1929 and scored a goal in the 2-0 final victory against the Scottish military team Dirhams . In May 1930 he won the Cup of Egypt by beating Al-Ittihad from Alexandria 2-0 in the final . In June 1931 he was again in the final, this time with Zamalek, but what was lost 1: 4 against Al-Ahly.

He ended his playing career from around 1932 in Canada with Montréal Carsteel FC , where he was probably in one or more wins of the Coupe du Québec between 1932 and 1934. Attempts to get a coach in North America failed.

In the 1930s he was a coach at the International Sport Club in Cairo and from 1940 to 1944 he was the national coach of Egypt .

Statistical overview

Clubs - players
Trainer
successes

Web links and literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Egyptian Inside Right - Signs for Derby County , Daily Mail (London), September 22, 1920, p. 9.
  2. ↑ Abdallah, Tewfik , (Statistics from Derby County), The Rams, 2007 (via Internet Archive Wayback Machine)
  3. ^ From Central League to First Division , Evening Telegraph (Dundee, Scotland), August 21, 1930, p. 9
  4. ^ Abdullah for America , Hull Daily Mail, May 26, 1923, p. 3.
  5. ↑ Sporting Items , Nottingham Evening Post, Aug. 16, 1923, p. 6
  6. ^ The Amateur League , Derby Daily Telegraph, March 15, 1924, p. 4
  7. ^ North and South: Abdallah Gets Going , Derby Daily Telegraph, March 22, 1924, p. 4
  8. ↑ Sporting Tiems (sic), Nottingham Evening Post, May 8, 1924, p. 8
  9. ^ Club History: Part 1 - 1885 to 1945: The Early Years , Hartlepool United (as of July 31, 2020)
  10. ↑ فى الاهلى كدبة ابريل عرض مستمر || توفيق عبد الله || وفصل جديد من فصول تزوير التاريخ , zamalek.tv, April 22, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Abdullah, Tewfik
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abdallah, Tawfik; توفيق عبد الله (Arabic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Egyptian soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Cairo
DATE OF DEATH 20th century