Egypt vs. Algeria

I bet most of us can remember the Egypt and Algeria match in 2009 in the qualifications for the World Cup 2010. This match should have been like any other, important but yet still between two closely related countries. So why did it end up being a political crisis? Many blame the media for what happened then and still is to our present day. Before the match Egypt had to win Algeria with at least two goals in order to have a chance at qualifying. It started out with both countries' media placing a lot of emphasis on the importance of the match. Then a couple days before the match the Algerian team's bus was said to be thrown with rocks while the players were moving from the airport to the hotel. On the other hand the Egyptian police denied that any thing happened. The Algerian players showed up at the match with bandages wrapped around their head emphasizing what happened. Then came in again the role of the media when the Algerian newspapers started exploiting news that Algerians were being killed in Egypt for no apparent reason. Although none of that happened the numbers kept on increasing everyday with numbers between 1 and 20 killed Algerians. This lead to Algerians being hostile to Egyptians living in Algeria breaking into their homes and crashing their cars. Although nothing had happened in Egypt the Algerian media lead the Algerians to believe that something did releasing their outrage on Egyptians living in Algeria. The matter did not stop thus far the Egyptian government called on the Egyptian ambassador to return to Egypt for consulting. Egyptian media through newspapers, TV channels and Facebook were exchanging videos of Algerians burning and stepping on the Egyptian flag. When the Egyptians won the Algerians in the African World Cup some Egyptians spread pictures of hate and insult to the Algerians leading the same problem to rise again. This comes to show how both media's irresponsible behavior of spreading false information or exaggerating information lead to a major crisis between two countries that have a lot more in common and in history to be simply broken because of a soccer match.