Proving them wrong

Iwas happy to see Egypt offering to host the 2010 World Cup, for sport was well known and widely practised in Ancient Egypt -- as the 5,000-year old walls testify. This was never a violent sport in which human beings lost their lives confronting wild animals, as was the case in the arenas of other civilisations, like the Roman amphitheatre. It was rather a peaceful, competitive sport, the spirit of which we must maintain. Such a spirit would be particularly important if we were chosen to host the Mondial, for extremism and violence can only spoil the pleasant, civilised atmosphere in which competitive sport is practised.

Among those things that qualify Egypt for the honour at hand is the Egyptian people's competitive spirit -- that they are never bad losers -- and their fascination with football, which is so intense it has become almost proverbial. You would be hard-pressed to find, among Egyptians, a single person who did not -- at one point in his life -- play football. Few even give up their interest in football in their old age. To this day I remember playing football as a child and a young man. At one point my childhood friends and I formed two teams, and every day we would compete on the streets of Abbasiya.

Until now, as Egyptians, we have not found out how to benefit from this love of football. Rather we have always turned it into laughing matter, the subject of sarcasm and proof of the claim that Egyptians are not a serious people -- especially since many Egyptians pay more attention to football than they do to vital issues. Then we say, "Had this been a match between Ahli and Zamalek people would have paid more attention to it." Now the time has come for this popular madness to turn into the basis for a genuinely beneficial activity, on which we can build the mores and regulations required for hosting the World Cup -- so that everyone in the world will continue to remember Egyptian generosity and good sportsmanship for a long, long time afterwards.

And this is not to mention Egypt's status or the facilities it possesses, which may well contribute to our image all over the world. Honoured by the World Cup, we might even be able to prove our increasingly virulent detractors wrong.