CAIRO — After winning 2-1 against Congo, the Egyptian soccer team qualified for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. This has sparked wide calls for the return of Egyptian fans to stadiums.

The Pharaohs won Oct. 8 at the Borg el-Arab Stadium in Alexandria, where Mohamed Salah scored the two goals that would send them back to the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, since the 1990 World Cup in Italy. Members of the Egyptian parliament called on the government to allow fans to return to the stadiums to express their support for the players.

Egypt is known as a nation that is obsessed with soccer, but its fans have faced hard times since Feb. 1, 2012, when more than 74 people were killed and hundreds injured in a violent clash between two soccer teams’ fans in Port Said, a city in northeast Egypt along the Mediterranean coast. The fans of the two teams, Al-Masry and Al-Ahly attacked each other with knives, clubs and explosives, and many Al-Ahly fans were killed.

Egyptian Premier League matches were canceled, and other league matches were played in empty stadiums after the clash, but soccer games returned to normal around February 2013. This normalization, however, was short-lived and clashes, along with demands for justice for Al-Ahly fans killed in Port Said, continued, pushing the Egyptian Sports Ministry on April 20, 2013, to permanently ban club fans from attending local soccer matches. The Confederation of African Football demanded that fans be allowed to attend international games involving major clubs and Egyptian teams.