If you’re like me and don’t care for football until the World Cup arrives, then, willingly or not, it becomes the center of every discussion. My interaction with sports is one of a bystander who once in a while looks up to see what the fuss is about. The fuss is usually a meme-able feature in a game. Football of course is deeply ingrained in the social and cultural fabric of Africa, so in this World Cup, I put a spin on Issa Rae’s line and root for every team from Africa. The World Cup and the events surrounding it offer a chance to unite us even if it’s just over a sports tournament. This year, Africa is represented by Nigeria and Senegal from West Africa, and Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco from North Africa. Despite little show of African unity behind Morocco’s fifth bid, to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, there is a mutual fascination about football culture and history that unites African countries. So, at this juncture I claim the North African teams, as much as they will claim to be African, if only for this tournament. At this year’s tournament in Russia, one player has dominated online discussion and piqued my attention. A new emerging star of African football, Egypt’s Mohamed Salah, has become the symbol that propelled Egypt to the World Cup after 28 years. The media adores him, and in the UK where he plays for Liverpool, fans chant about converting to Islam if he scores another goal. In Egypt, he is on billboards, and his name is sprayed onto the sides of buildings. At a time when Egyptian society is divided, Salah unites not only Egyptian, but also Arab and Muslim youth, too. His image subverts Muslim stereotypes abundant in the West. His popularity was evident in recent elections when Egyptian voters decided to write Salah’s name than vote for the opposition candidate. Few athletes transcend their career to symbolise something more, and Salah is one such athlete. The questions of expectations and the World Cup are tricky for any player, trickier still for a player with loaded expectations, suffering from a ligament injury near his shoulder. Egypt like three other African teams started off with a loss, but there is still hope as Senegal turned the tide by beating Poland. Salah is an athlete who is more than an athlete—someone who appeals to the wildest dreams of kids who grow up playing on dusty dirt fields across Africa, often barefoot or in plastic sandals, dreaming that someday a foreign scout will show up, see them from the sidelines, point to them and mark them for greatness. Salah’s fame stretches beyond Liverpool, where fans bow in prayer even if they don’t follow his faith, so as his fame grows internationally, so has the idea that he can be a person who can pull multiple communities together. A reminder of how football, a game that is not just a game can help to close the distance between our diverse identities, even across the Sahara. With my lacklustre care for football, the World Cup feels like something worth holding on to, backing the types of players who come along and know how to represent our aspirations on a pitch when other venues seem hopeless.
