Half-time:
Big week
By
Inas Mazhar
This week Egypt will be involved in two extremely important sports developments. The national football team plays in the African Nations Cup in Tunisia with hopes that the squad will claim a record fifth title.
The other endeavour takes place here when the five-man FIFA inspection committee comes to town to see whether Egypt is worthy of hosting the 2010 World Cup. Tomorrow, the committee starts its seven-day nationwide visit after having seen South Africa, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, the other bidding countries.
Knowing my country, I can say with confidence that the FIFA people will enjoy themselves, be pleasantly surprised by what this country has to offer and will no doubt appreciate the efforts being made to help make a long-awaited dream a reality.
Egyptian officials will show the inspectors how modern Egypt is in terms of its infrastructure, telecommunications, accommodation, transportation and hospitals. But at the same time they will also show how well we have preserved our past and how much we cherish it.
Egyptian officials notwithstanding, the Egyptian public has a role to play as well. The people have to show the delegates how passionate we are about football. As soon as the FIFA team steps off their plane, they have to sense how strongly we feel about hosting 2010, the first ever World Cup in Africa.
Those who believe that sports and politics should not mix simply do not understand either; the two go hand in hand and in fact are often intrinsically woven together. Sports has many times broken the ice between nations. Remember the United States and China and ping-pong diplomacy of the early 1970s? More recently, the 1998 World Cup match between Iran and the US received huge pre- match publicity and was one of the highlights of the tournament. Iran won but the point is that the match, played between countries which have been at odds for decades, helped ease the strained relations.
Relations during the Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States warmed up as a direct result of sports. The US and its allies had boycotted the Olympics in Moscow in 1980 after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and in retaliation, the Soviets and their eastern satellites opted to stay away from the Olympics in 1984 in Los Angeles. But the 1988 Seoul Olympics brought them back together under one roof.
Fortunately, Egypt has good ties with all countries. Should the 2010 World Cup be held on this historical land, this fact will be highlighted even more. Just look at our World Cup slogan -- Uniting People.
