Egypt and Fair Play

Rashid Abdelrahim — News
Egypt competed in the current World Cup and delivered a respectable, entertaining and clean performance.
Egypt’s excellence came at a time when the standards of the current global football tournament—the showcase event of the world’s most popular and widely followed sport—have declined.
The world’s most prestigious sporting competition has become an arena for corrupt political interference after FIFA tolerated the intervention of the American President, who has corrupted politics and now seeks to repeat the same behaviour within one of the world’s most respected sporting institutions.
FIFA was once a faithful guardian of the game, but that is no longer the case. It listened to and complied with US President Donald Trump and allowed the American player Folarin Balogun to return to action, contrary to FIFA’s rules and regulations, which prohibit a player sent off with a red card from playing in the following match.
What Trump has done in a sport about which he knows nothing and has never played amounts to corruption of the same kind practised by a Western world that corrupts everything it touches.
Egypt’s elimination from the World Cup can be attributed to several factors, including efforts to ensure that Lionel Messi remains present and victorious in international competitions until his retirement. Why should this be surprising when he has become the Zionist symbol on the football pitch?
Messi paid the price in advance to Trump, the protector of Israel, when he broke ranks with many international sporting champions by expressing sympathy for Israel, visiting the Western Wall and wearing the Jewish skullcap known as the kippah in 2013, before repeating the visit in 2019.
Honourable international footballers such as Cristiano Ronaldo have taken courageous positions in support of the Palestinian people and in condemnation of what is happening in Gaza. They have refused to be interviewed by Israeli television channels and have declined to raise the Israeli flag.
Today, Messi is reaping the rewards, and he does so while playing against a national team representing the Arab nation.
Every minor infringement committed against the Egyptian national team in yesterday’s match against Argentina went unnoticed by the referee, yet his whistle sounded whenever Messi was touched.
The referee’s blatant bias reached its peak when he refused to consult VAR to settle an obvious incident whenever there was a possibility that the decision might favour Egypt.
The Egyptian national football team has proudly written its name into the tournament’s history, delivering an outstanding performance and reaching new heights by advancing to the Round of 16.
The team’s performance in this tournament will, God willing, pave the way for Egypt to reach the quarter-finals and semi-finals in future competitions.
Egypt will bring pride to the Arab nation and, alongside Morocco, become the second Arab country to establish itself as a leading football nation in future tournaments.
Sudan has had the honour of making a significant contribution to the development of football in Egypt by providing several outstanding Sudanese players who joined Egyptian clubs, with some later serving as coaches.
The Egyptian people will never forget the great captain Abdel Moneim Mustafa, known as Garn Shatta, who played for one of Egypt’s greatest clubs. Supporters of Al Ahly and Egyptian football fans more broadly will continue to remember him as one of the greatest figures in Egyptian football history.
The history of football relations between our two countries also remembers the player Al-Mahjoub Allah Jabu, whose performances earned him the nickname “the High Dam” and who played for Al Ahly.
Egyptian football also remembers the great Zamalek goalscorer Omar Al-Nour and the club’s goalkeeper Samir Mohamed Ali.
This rich and shared history makes our people among those who take the greatest pleasure in the Egyptian national team’s performances, which have now joined the ranks of the great footballing nations. It also makes Sudanese people particularly saddened by the injustice inflicted upon Egypt.
This is the price the Egyptian people are being forced to pay for the injustices of our age—an age in which false victories are manufactured through the interference of political leaders and the reputations of favoured players are protected by referees who side with their own societies and their unjust civilisation, degrading the noblest of sporting competitions and the sport that commands the greatest popular support in the world.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=15698