World Cup 2006 in Egypt

June 24, 2006

Four years ago I was at the beginning of a year-long residence in Cairo, and the World Cup was starting.. My roommate and I had a small television in our apartment. It had poor reception, but we could still watch the games. This time around the situation is somewhat different since the World Cup is not being shown on regular television. To see the World Cup one must subscribe to a special cable network.. which is quite expensive. This situation arose from the fact that the rights to the World Cup were auctioned, and this time around a private cable company bought exclusive rights to broadcast the games. So from Egypt to Morocco to Syria to Jordan.. (I think this even extends into Africa).. people have had to scramble to find ways to watch the matches, either subscribing to cable or renewing an old friendship with someone who has..

Last week I read about the games in Germany and how large screen televisions had been set up along a mile-long stretch of walkway outside a stadium.. People without tickets are able to stream to these public screens. Egypt has nothing like that.

The lack of easy access to the games has brought out some extreme statements in the press. A newspaper here quoted an official as saying:

I call upon human rights organizations to ask the UN to make watching the World Cup matches free for all people around the world as one of the basic human rights. The UN should stand up to FIFA...

I have been following the results pretty closely.. I have to admit. On occasion I see parts of the games, like when I get lunch at McDonalds and sit underneath their television. I could watch more if I simply went out to one of the nicer cafes. But truth be told, I am not a big fan of watching sports in a big crowd.. I am not sure I have ever done that even! This week Al-Ahram Weekly reported the words of a cafe owner:

He notes that even married couples come to watch the matches. "The wife eats in silence and the husband watches the match. It's as if they aren't sitting together. But at least he took her out.

My guess is that Emily would not be so easily satisfied, nor accept this silent wifely fate in the midst of a dramatic match. So I continue to follow from a bit of a distance.

A sub-plot that may not have been picked up in the media everywhere was the unfurling of the Israeli flag by the Ghanaian player John Paintsil, after a goal against the Czech Republic. Paintsil plays for a club in Israel, and his way of celebrating a goal was to pull out a small Israeli flag. An article in the Daily Star quotes an Egyptian paper:

Egyptians supported the Ghanaian team all the way until the 82nd minute, and regretted it after the Israeli flag...

The upshot of this act was a flurry of official complaints. Ghana's foreign minister has kept busy meeting ambassadors from the Palestinian Authority, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Algeria, and Morocco, apologizing to them. I am sure that was a fun day! It is never possible to fathom the depth of the distaste for Israel here. Pulling out the flag of a country other than the one for whom you are playing may be odd.. and I should think Ghanaian fans would raise their eyebrows at that.. But it is hardly the business of any other country, let alone a reason to take offense.

Much more offensive than the flag itself was the response of Arab papers. The Daily Star notes some of the printed responses:

The main question on Egyptian lips after the match was "why?"

Some papers described Paintsil as a "Mossad agent," others said "an Israeli had paid him to do it" but the most elaborate theory was offered by the top-selling state owned daily Al Ahram.

"The real reason," sports analyst Hassan El-Mestekawi wrote, stems from the fact that many Ghanaian players go through football training camps set up by an Israeli coach who "discovered the treasure of African talent, and abused the poverty of the continent's children" with the ultimate goal of selling them off to the European clubs.

"The training program for these children starts every morning with a salute to the Israeli flag," Mestekawi claimed.

That is all nonsense. Most offensive is the blithe implication that a soccer slave trade has been opened up by Israelis in Africa! Followed closely by the way Ghanaians themselves are infantilized in the scenario.