He played with Cristi Chivu at Ajax Amsterdam and wants to play professional football again, even though he is 41 years old and retired for 11 years!

Ahmed Hossam Hussein Abdelhamid (41), or Mido, as he is known in the world of football, played with Cristi Chivu at Ajax Amsterdam in the early 2000s, and now, more than a decade after he retired, he wants to take off your boots.

Disappointed by the lack of value of strikers in his native country, Mido announced on a television station that he would return to professional football. He will do summer training with a club, after which he promises to score “at least 10 goals” in the 2024-25 season.

Fabulous! Mido, the striker who played with Cristi Chivu at Ajax Amsterdam, returns to football at the age of 41! He had been retired since 2013

Ahmed Hossam Hussein Abdelhamid, by his real name, or Mido, as everyone in the world of football knows him, is a former great striker, an Egyptian international with 19 goals scored in the shirt of the first representative team, who throughout his career was legitimized by clubs such as Ajax, Marseille, AS Roma or Tottenham.

Brought up in his native Zamalek’s youth ranks, Mido made his first move to Europe in July 2000 when he signed for Belgium’s KAA Gent. Over a single year, Ajax paid an important sum of money for him in those days, namely 4,200,000 euros. In the jersey of the “lancers”, Mido ended up teaming up with Cristi Chivuone of the most important players in the history of the Romanian national team, winner of the Champions League with Inter Milan.

Mido continued his rise in Dutch football, and later went through other strong championships, such as Spain, France, Italy or England. Marseille paid €6,000,000 for him in 2003, then in 2004 AS Roma paid the same amount to transfer him from France. In August 2006, Tottenham took him from Roma for €6,750,000, after which, a year later, Middlesbrough put €8,800,000 on the table to transfer him.

In the last years of his career, Mido also moved to West Ham, before returning to Ajax, but also at Zamalek, in his native country. He hung up his boots in 2013, aged just 30, after one season in a Barnsley shirt.

Years followed in which Mido flirted with coaching, but also with various management positions, being technical director at several clubs, so that in 2024, 11 years after retiring from his football career, he announced his return to grass.

Speaking to a television station in Cairo, Egypt, Mido said he was deeply disappointed by the value of his home country’s forwards, which is why he decided to return to domestic competition. Without giving too many details, he said that he will sign with a club in the first division and promises to score at least 10 goals in the 2024-2025 season:

My journey is not over yet. I am thinking of returning to the Egyptian first league as a footballer. I bet I will score at least 10 goals if I come back to the EPL. There are currently no good strikers and that encourages me to come back. I will soon join a club in Egypt and do the training camp with them. I’m 60% ready. I didn’t retire from football, I just took a 10-year break,” said Mido, quoted by The Sun.

6 years ago he was in deplorable physical shape

Below are some of Mido’s career stats:

• Ajax Amsterdam – 26 goals and 13 assists in 63 games
• Tottenham Hotspur – 19 goals and 5 assists in 61 games
• Marseille – 9 goals and 7 assists in 34 games
• Middlesbrough – 7 goals and 2 assists in 32 games

He won the African Cup in 2006 with the Egyptian national team, and at club level he won two titles, a Dutch Cup and a Dutch Supercup, all with Ajax Amsterdam.

Mido coached Zamalek for several terms and also coached Ismaily SC, also from Egypt, between December 2022 and February 2023. Outside of Egypt, he also coached in Saudi Arabia for Al-Wehda, between 2018 and 2019.

Also at that time, Mido was becoming a star in the international press because of his deplorable physical shape. A photo posted by him on Instagram showed him on a yacht with several friends. However, Mido, who can be seen standing in the picture below, was considerably heavier than when he was impressing as a footballer. At that time, the press in Italy was talking about at least 30 extra kilograms in the case of the former striker.

Now, as can be seen in the photo gallery of the article, Mido is in much better physical shape.