The Zamalek team qualified for the round of 16 of the Egypt Cup, with a difficult victory over the Misr Insurance team with a score of 3/2, on Friday, in the round of 32 of the competition.
Guinean Daouda Akmara scored the first goal for Insurance in the 42nd minute, then Mohamed Shehata equalized for Zamalek in stoppage time of the first half, and in the 53rd minute Ahmed Sharif gave Zamalek the lead from a penalty kick, then tied again for Egypt's Insurance Hisham Yehia in the 84th minute, making the score 2/2. But substitute Adam Kayed succeeded in leading Zamalek to advance again with a third goal in the 86th minute.
Zamalek will face its Eastern counterpart, Enppi, in the round of 16 of the Egypt Cup, after the latter qualified earlier by winning with the same result over the Proxy team.
Zamalek is looking for its 30th title in the Egypt Cup, as it has won 29 titles, the last of which was in the 2024/2025 season.
Algerian Olympic boxing champion Iman Khalif, after being absent from the ring since the Paris Olympics, will fight her first professional fight on December 15 in the French capital, where her coach aspires to achieve a world title “very soon.”
The 27-year-old Algerian boxer, who has repeatedly been subjected to campaigns questioning her sexual identity, was forced last April to postpone her first professional fight due to an injury she sustained during training.
Khalif, who holds a professional license from the French Boxing Federation, along with her coach Kamal Abdel Salam and event organizer Yacine Belrabah, announced during a press conference held on Friday in Paris that she will fight on December 15 in the Maison de la Mutualité hall.
The Algerian boxer said: “It has been more than two years in which I have not practiced boxing, and I have missed the ring.” I live for this sport, and I can't wait to get back to it for myself and my fans. The last years (after the 2024 Paris Olympics) and this downtime have been very difficult. "It is time to move to the professional world, and I will do my best."
While she won her Olympic medal in the weight category of less than 66 kg, next month she will compete in the “super welter” category (less than 69.8 kg) against Dominican boxer Clarida Sarabia, who holds Dutch citizenship.
Coach Kamal Abdel Salam praised Sarbia, saying about her: “She is a high-level boxer, and she has never been defeated before; She achieved 4 victories, all by knockout. “So it represents a real challenge, but we have complete confidence in Iman.”
The coach believed that Algerian boxing is capable of winning a world title “very soon,” noting that “this may be achieved within three to five fights, as it has the necessary capabilities for that.”
For his part, Balrabeh said: “We aspire to put Iman at the top of the world, and she can be likened to Muhammad Ali.”
Iman Khalif has not competed in any fight since winning the gold medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics, and she was also unable to participate in the Eindhoven Championship in June 2025, due to the International Boxing Federation adopting, a week before that, a mandatory chromosomal test.
Despite repeated accusations that she is a transgender athlete, the boxer was born female, but she naturally carries the SRA gene, which is an indicator of masculinity.
In February, she revealed in statements to the newspaper L'Equipe that she had undergone hormonal treatment to lower her testosterone levels before the 2024 Olympics.
On Friday, the UAE national team announced a list of 26 players to face Honduras and Syria in a friendly match on the sidelines of an internal camp in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain during the period from the ninth to the 17th of November, as part of the preparation program for the upcoming matches, after the postponement of the Asian Football Cup.
The team will play its first friendly match against Honduras on November 13 at Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi, before concluding the camp by facing Syria on the 17 of the same month at Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium in Al Ain.
The two matches represent an important opportunity for the technical staff to test the players against two different football schools, which helps evaluate the team’s ability to deal with various playing styles and different competitive conditions, before the upcoming official matches.
The camp is part of the UAE national team’s preparation program for the Asian Cup Finals, which was postponed until the end of next year.
