Sports Viruses and the Sway of Money

Written by Dr. Hamada Al-Antably

Anyone following Egyptian football in recent years will find numerous negative phenomena filling the sports community, accompanied by media wars across various visual, audio, and print media, with their primary protagonist being the sway of money. You find a statesman and political official in a brotherly Arab country who can best be described as an adolescent. This official has never behaved with responsibility in his actions; instead, he set out to buy everything—pens, media platforms, a club, and other means—in order to acquire a historic club tied to the past, present, and even future of Arab sports: Al Ahly Club, that towering sports institution. But it refused and proved unattainable to him.

The result was that he filled the earth with screaming and barking, caring little that he is a responsible man who ought to shoulder his responsibilities and elevate the interests and relations of two peoples and two countries that are the largest in the region. Instead, he acted like a spoiled child screaming in the belief that it is his toy and that with his father’s money he can buy everything. Pardon me, Your Excellency the Official, there are things that money cannot buy. The ethics of the authentic Arab do not permit you to reproach those to whom you give gifts, because a gift is supposed to be just that, and accepting it is an act in accordance with the commandment of the Prophet (PBUH), not because you are superior or doing a favor to the recipient. Yet it appears you lack much education, just as you lack basic manners.

I had hoped there would be a reaction from the political leadership in our second country to quash this sedition and kill this virus. On the other hand, you find media megaphones filling all spaces, playing every angle, and changing colors like a chameleon to achieve material gains, trading in everything where the end justifies the means; their goal is money, and their methods are filthy. These are viruses that must be rejected and purged so they do not destroy sports thought and intellect and spread discord.

The final scene in the picture is distorted to the degree of a foul-mouthed club president who, despite being a man of law, manipulates everything, undeterred by any restraint. I do not know who backs him, but I hope he is cast out by the club he chairs—which he brings shame upon and to its history before anything else—since laws stand helpless to deter him. Such viruses, as previously mentioned, must be treated by amputation from the sports body so they do not lead to the spread of the disease throughout the rest of the athletic body and cause its destruction.

And upon God rests the intent of the path.

By Dr. Hamada Al-Antably