Essam El-Hadary

El Hadary was born in Kafr El Battikh, Damietta. His father was a craftsman who owned his own workshop making furniture. El Hadary took up playing football without his parents' knowledge, washing his muddy clothes in a local river after playing in order to avoid them knowing. He was spotted by his local football team before being signed by Second Division club Damietta at age 17. In his first training session, he was offered goalkeeping gloves, having previously never worn a pair, but refused to wear them and would run the 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) to training every day. He made his first team debut for Damietta in 1993 at the age of 20, and after two seasons signed a pre-contract with Egyptian champions Al Ahly. In 12 years at the Cairo club he won eight Egyptian Premier League titles, four Egypt Cups, four Egyptian Super Cups, four CAF Champions League titles, three CAF Super Cups, one Arab Club Champions Cup, and two Arab Super Cups. Swiss club FC Sion announced that they had signed El Hadary on a four-year contract in February 2008, despite objections from his club, Al Ahly, due to the fact that he was still under contract with them. El Hadary was fined and suspended by Al Ahly, before world governing body FIFA gave permission for Sion to complete the deal. In 2009, FIFA suspended El Hadary and penalized Sion, even though he had already decided to return to Egypt. In July, while his suspension was stayed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), El Hadary moved to…

El Hadary represented Egypt a total of 159 times from his debut in 1996 until his retirement in 2018. He won the African Cup of Nations four times with his country. He was chosen as the best goalkeeper in the 2006 African Cup of Nations, held in homeland Egypt, in the 2008 African Cup of Nations, held in Ghana and for the 2010 African Cup of Nations, held in Angola. In January 2013, his agent tweeted that El Hadary had retired from international football after being benched for a run of games, being the 23rd most capped international player in history and also the player with most African Cup of Nations titles. He returned to the national team in a match against Bosnia Herzegovina on 5 March 2014, winning 2–0.

On 4 June 2016, El Hadary played the full 90 minutes in a 2–0 win against Tanzania which secured Egypt's qualification for 2017 Africa Cup of Nations. On 17 January 2017, two days after his 44th birthday, he became the oldest player to ever appear in an Africa Cup of Nations match after replacing Ahmed El-Shenawy in Egypt's first match of the tournament then on 5 February 2017 on a final match of the tournament against Cameroon he was then 44 years and 21 days. On 1 February 2017, El Hadary saved two penalties as Egypt defeated Burkina Faso 4–3 in a penalty shoot-out to advance to the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations Final. In June 2018, at the age of 45, he was named in Egypt's 23-man squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. He was the oldest of all players selected…

In September 2021, El Hadary became the goalkeeping coach of Egypt national team until March 2022, before joining Rogério Micale's Egypt U23 staff in August 2022. In February 2023, he became part of Héctor Cúper's coaching staff of Syria national team.

International

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