Rami Shaaban – From Brighton bench to World Cup in 12 months

Here is a question for you. Which former Albion player went from the Withdean bench to playing at a World Cup within 12 months, studied for a university degree in Cairo, played top flight football in England, Egypt, Norway and Sweden and has also worked as a mountain explosives specialist?

The answer is Rami Shaaban, whose brief Brighton career was nearly as weird as his quite extraordinary CV. Plucked from the wilderness by Mark McGhee, he lasted six games in the Albion goal before being cast aside and released, resurfacing a year on from being struggling Brighton’s number two as Sweden’s number one at the 2006 World Cup.

When Shaaban joined the Albion in February 2005, he had been without a club for eight months. He hadn’t played a competitive game of professional football for over two years. McGhee picked up Shaaban from nowhere.

A goalkeeper with such rustiness hardly seemed like a suitable signing to be pitching into a Championship relegation battle, but McGhee was desperate given the bad luck he had suffered with shot stoppers over the previous two months.

At the end of January, Michel Kuipers had injured his shoulder so badly in a 0-0 draw with Nottingham Forest that the surgeon who operated on the problem described it as looking like there had been an explosion inside his arm.

Kuipers would be out for nearly a year – in fact, he was lucky to return at all. Ben Roberts was still on Brighton’s books but only a few weeks away from retiring as a result of the chronic back trouble which had prevented him playing since the Division One two playoff final against Bristol City the previous May.

McGhee had initially turned to Chris May to fill the void from the bench against Forest when Kuipers was carried off.

Young American goalkeeper David Yelldell was brought in on loan from Blackburn Rovers but after an encouraging debut in a 1-1 draw at The Leeds United (when he infamously played the second half at homophobic Elland Road in a pink shirt), his form had tailed off alarmingly.

All of which led McGhee and Brighton to the door of Rami Shaaban. Born in Sweden to an Egyptian father and a Finnish mother, he began his football career with 39 games for Swedish third tier club Saltsjöbadens IF as a teenager.

Four years studying at university in Cairo followed, in which time he turned out for Egyptian top flight sides Zamalek and Ittihad Osman.

After his time in Egypt, he returned to Sweden with Nacka FF. A move to Djurgårdens Idrottsförening followed, a football club whose name you would not want to spell during a game of Scrabble.

It was while playing back in Sweden that Shaaban became a mountain explosives specialist, hardly a job that seems compatible with that of goalkeeper – can you imagine Maty Ryan scrambling up a hill to blow stuff up in his spare time?

With such an eclectic mix of football, dynamite and studies, it is remarkable that Shaaban managed to attract the attention of a Premier League club – let alone one who had just won the double.

We would love to know how Shaaban came to be seen by Arsene Wenger as the long-term successor to David Seaman in the Arsenal goal. Another ridiculous moment in a ridiculous career.

Shaaban wasn’t even Djurgårdens number one when the Gunners came calling in July 2002. The Swedish top flight season is played through the summer and Shaaban had only been getting game time because regular goalkeeper Andreas Isaksson was at the World Cup in Japan & South Korea with the national side.

Suddenly, Shaaban found himself from bench warming in Stockholm to moving to Highbury – all within a time frame of one month. Injury struck Seaman down and Shaaban found himself pitched in for his Arsenal debut two months later, keeping a clean sheet in a 0-0 Champions League draw against PSV Eindhoven.

He made his Premier League debut in the small matter of a North London Derby four days later, keeping a clean sheet in that too on the afternoon when Thierry Henry scored his famous individual goal followed by knee slide as Tottenham Hotspur were hammered 3-0.

That moment is now immortalised in stone as a statue outside the Emirates Stadium. There is no sign yet of a granite Shaaban celebrating a shutout on his league bow, but we’re sure it can’t be far away.

Shaaban played in Rome next as Henry enjoyed another remarkable 90 minutes, scoring a hat-trick to hammer Roma 3-1. He turned out in two further Premier League games, a 3-1 victory over Aston Villa and a 2-0 loss at Manchester United.

Things were looking good for Shaaban. But little did he know the defeat at Old Trafford on Saturday 7th December 2002 would turn out to be his last competitive game until Saturday 19th February 2005.

On Christmas Eve 2002, Shaaban suffered a horrific leg break in training. Talking to Goal some years later, Shaaban explained, “Dennis Bergkamp tried to lob me, I went backwards and tipped the ball onto the underside of the bar.”

“As I was on the ground, I tried to kick it away with my foot and at the same time Martin Keown tried to clear it, but he cleared my leg instead.”

“I didn’t feel any instant pain and I saw Martin strolling around, so I thought to myself, what was that bang? Then after a few seconds I started to feel my whole leg go numb, like when you sleep on your arm.”

“Then I saw my players running to me and I saw their faces, they all went pale because they could see my leg was totally disconnected.”

And that was that. Shaaban did return to be an unused substitute on a handful of occasions during Arsenal’s 2003-04 Invincibles season, but he wouldn’t play another minute for the Gunners.

A loan spell at West Ham United in January 2004 didn’t result in any game time either and Wenger released Shaaban in the summer of 2004 with the enigmatic Jens Lehmann now firmly established as Arsenal number one.

It is unclear what Shaaban did for the next eight months. Perhaps it involved bombs and dynamite or perhaps he just sat around drinking coffee – Wikipedia notes:

Shaaban is known for his love of coffee; he is often seen with a cup of coffee in his hand. He once said, “I dare not keep count of how many cups I drink per day. But my mum is actually even worse.”

It also states he is regularly seen drinking coffee with Freddie Ljungberg after they struck up quite the friendship as two Swedes at Highbury. Nice work if you can get it.

If Rami Shaaban’s move to Arsenal had come out of the blue, then his Brighton debut was even more so. He had only been invited to Withdean for a trial a couple of days earlier and hadn’t signed any sort of contract when McGhee pitched him in for his Albion debut on Saturday 19th February 2005. The opponents? Just eventual Championship title winners Sunderland.

Talk about being thrown at the deep end. From no competitive football for two years and two months to taking on the best side in the second tier of English football for a club deep in relegation trouble at the other end of the tabel.

Shaaban’s task didn’t get any easier when Adam Virgo was sent off after just 30 minutes. But despite having to play for over an hour against the Black Cats with just 10 men, the Albion produced their best result of the 2004-05 campaign to win 2-1.

Richard Carpenter and Mark McCammon got the goals. At the other end, it was a solid Brighton debut for Rami Shaaban. He was less worked than he would have expected to be, going full stretch to keep out a cross from Dean Whitehead and turning away a Sean Thornton effort.

What was most pleasing was the way in which he organised the defence. In Yelldell’s brief soirée between the posts, the back four had resembled an unsightly rabble. With Shaaban, there was a return to the regimented style that so often ground out surprise results under McGhee.

A week later and Shaaban kept a clean sheet in a 1-0 win over Millwall. That was enough to see McGhee hand him a deal until the end of the season.

Shaaban told the BBC, “It’s nice to sign a contract, and it’s a good step for me to get me back playing. I want to help Brighton stay in the Championship, then I want to be playing in the highest division I can.”

The theory went that as Shaaban played more following his two-and-a-half years out the game, he would get better and better – perhaps even show the sort of form that had led Wenger to identify him as Seaman’s possible successor.

But as was often the case with Brighton goalkeepers in the mid-00s, things didn’t go according to plan for Rami Shaaban. Four consecutive defeats followed in which he conceded 12 goals, the most chastening experience coming in a 5-1 defeat against Plymouth Argyle.

Shaaban did at least write himself into the history books that day, becoming the only Albion goalkeeper ever to be penalised for handball when running to the edge of the box to drop kick the ball.

He must have strayed a centimetre outside his area, the sort of thing you see every week across the country. Unfortunately, an eagle eyed linesman at Home Park decided to raise his flag.

Even more unfortunately for Shaaban, Plymouth had outstanding free kick taker Paul Wooton on their books at the time. He duly smashed an unstoppable free kick that rocketed into the back of the net for Plymouth’s third of the afternoon with just 21 minutes played.

With Brighton leaking goals at such an alarming rate, McGhee signed Alan Blayney from Southampton on March’s loan deadline day.

Blayney became the Albion’s fifth goalkeeper of the season, playing the final seven games of the campaign as McGhee’s men just about avoided an immediate return to the third tier.

Rami Shaaban was released by Brighton that summer. We wouldn’t hear of him again for another year until turning on the television for Sweden v Trinidad & Tobago on June 10th 2006, when to the surprise of Seagulls supporters everywhere he was starting in Sweden’s opening game of the World Cup.

Somehow, Rami Shaaban had gone from Brighton bench to World Cup goalkeeper in 12 months. He went to the tournament in Germany having never played international football in his life.

In fact, he had been without a club for another six months following his release from the Albion. It was only in the early part of 2006 that Norwegian side Fredrikstad took a chance on Shaaban. Making the World Cup after spending 14 of the previous 24 months unemployed must be some sort of record.

Nobody should be surprised when it comes to Shaaban though. After all, he was a bloke who did things differently. The graduate, turned mountain explosive expert, turned Champions League goalkeeper. turned Brighton substitute, turned full international and World Cup representative.

Quite the career.