Cairo, Egypt – 31 October 2009

Happy Halloween from Egypt!

After months of planning, we have finally begun our world journey for Why Sport Matters. The first leg of our trip takes us to Cairo and our impressions so far of this capital city is that is just like most big modern cities: lots of people moving about, different types of neighborhoods, unique architecture, and good food — kushari (see photo below) and baba ghanoush being our favorites, so far. While we were unsure of what to expect for our first visit to an arabic and mostly Muslim country, we have been amazed to discover how warm and welcoming Egyptians are.

From the sporting perspective, the first thing you learn is that football (soccer) rules in Africa (the photo above shows a football field sharing space with a mosque). One person said that on a popularity scale, football is the entire top 10, then you have the rest. Football is indeed everywhere (see photo of Real Madrid’s Ronaldo on a massive billboard), from people playing in any available space, to watching it on TV, to talking about it socially.

Much of the sporting structure in Egypt is based on the “Sports Club”, which is at its base a massive complex with multiple sports to be practiced and played. But they are much more than that — as it is also an important social setting which establishes community networks and social bonding. One of our first visits was to the renowned Heliopolis Sports Club that was gracious enough to give us a tour of their beautiful facility.

Two of the biggest of these clubs in Cairo are the Zamalek and Al-Ahly clubs, which focus especially hard on developing their top-level football teams. As a result, this is the most intense football rivalry in the country and the derby matches are the most anticipated of each season. The model seems to be successful as the big clubs are producing the players for the Egyptian national team which is the current African champion.

Egypt is also coming off of hosting one of the most important events in their history 2 weeks ago, the FIFA under-20 mens World Cup. The event was a huge success, the most well-attended u-20 event in history. In addition, Ghana beat Brazil in an exciting final, and the Egyptian crowds were thrilled by the achievement of their fellow Africans.

We are fortunate to have fellow FIFA master alums Amr Fahmy and Hicham Elamrani (see photo on left) who are working at the African Football Confederation (CAF) here in Cairo, and have introduced us to quite a few local people in the sports community. At the same time, we are keeping an eye on the under-17 mens World Cup going on right now in Nigeria, which is our next stop. We hope to be at the semi-finals and finals next week, with a chance to see some of the top stars of tomorrow.

Stay tuned to the site for more updates along the way as we look forward to exploring more of Egypt. Also note that:

  • The rotating picture box on the homepage is where you’ll find a few of our most recent photos. We hope in the next coming days to have some photo galleries on the Multimedia page where you’ll be able to flip through hundreds of photos.
  • For those not familiar with Twitter, the box on the homepage under the photo box is where you can scroll through our most recent comments about our trip. You don’t have to subscribe or sign-up for Twitter, just keep coming back to scroll through our comments.

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