Football, Capitalism, and Militarization of the Public Space in Egypt after 2013:  insights around the “Tal Umrouh” chant, July 2018.

Introduction

The recent chants against Turki al-Sheikh by ultra-fan groups of Al Ahly SC has gained wide popular exposure and support, drawing to sight that sporting pride is uneasily tradable for political influence, and highlighting the contentious relation between football, foreign investment, state violence, and relevant sports policies of the 3ed July administration. Youth deviancy has been a traditional approach to analyze the repeated outburst of clash between fan groups and the police apparatus. The recent incident draws attention to the use of profane language as means to defend national dignity and retrieve the right to fun, in response to the ongoing crackdown on Ultra groups since 2011, and following efforts by foreign investors, state, media outlets, and club administrations to control the sport industry and maximize political profits through monied sport businesses.  This paper delves inside the world of football conflicts, fan groups’ struggle with greed and oppression, and the subversive use of language for avenge and retrieve of rights.

Background

Before starting, I will brief a snapshot summery of the incident’s background.  In 2011 uprising, ultra-fan groups of Al Ahly SC Club, the most popular football club in Egypt, ranked best among African Club Rankings, and a seven-times winner of the African Champions League, were active participants in the demonstrations leading to ex-president Mubarak resignation. The highly fit and close-knitted fans have been the most powerful challenge to the authority. A long history of street fights and combating the police aided the group defending peaceful demonstrations against violent attacks by security officers and state-led thugs ‘baltagiyya’. An absolute enmity with the police and unchecked support for freedom and national pride had worked in favor of millions and instigated a drive for revenge. Under the SCAF administration, the police ordered the murder of over 70 spectators from the “Ultras Ahlawy” group during a match in Port said in 2012. Show trials ended with a presidential pardon by President Abdulfattah Al Sisi, leader of the military coup against ex-president Mohammed Morsi. A second massacre targeted 23 victims of the same group in the Air Defense Stadium only few years after the Port said incident. A court ruling in May 2015 outlawed the fan group on ground of terrorism. A recent clash in a match between Egypt’s Ahly SC and Gabon’s CF Mounana in the CAF Champions League ended with hundreds detained and the group’s announcement of self-dissolution in April 2018.
Meanwhile, a six-years ban of spectators’ attendance to games had hit the football business badly and increased calls for returning the fans- with absolute-obedience being ensured. Some clubs suggested authorizing official fandom bodies under clubs’ administration, ironically, similar to state-controlled syndical associations under socialist regimes. Along with declining profits of football tournaments and weakened demand by commercial investors was an increased corruption inside Al Ahly SC administration who called a bail out by Saudi minister of Sports, Turki al-Sheikh1 , late 2017, in return of signing him the honorary president of the century-old club. The Saudi minister was keen to penetrate the sports industry and ensure absolute control of money and technical moves. In few months, conflicts aroused, and al-Sheikh sought to own and invest in another highly competitive club, Pyramids FC, to take Ahly down the crown of Africa’s football. Pyramids SC was fostered by a satellite channel, qualified national and international players, and a group of professional sportscasters. The unprecedented spending (33 million euros), accusations of meddling in refereeing ‎decision and creating double standards, along with procurement of foreign players instead of ‎investing in young local calibers, all singed the constantly acrimonious presence of Sheikh in the Egyptian football and eventually increased popular anger. The scornful chants led to withdrawal of sports investment from Egypt. The Saudi minister’s efforts to appropriate Al Ahly then queer its pitch have turned in vein. However, 21 members of “Ultras Ahlawy” group, who allegedly led the chants, were reportedly arrested and the group was profoundly ashamed for the insult. The “Tal Umroh” statement went viral on social media and mirrored a subversive use of a traditionally positive Arabic expression.
To this background, one can contextuate some lines of analysis ‎(1) how contention arises between local fanbases and global investment‎, (2) How Al Ahly compromised his tension with its ultra-fans (3) How media and state authorities depict the ultras in news and TV shows (4) and how language is used in ethical and moral contentions.

Football games commercialized…

In the past, Egyptian football tournaments were based on local middle-class players and blue collar or peasantry spectators whose membership in local clubs allowed the forming of passionate and sympathetic grassroot bases. Football players were less professional while the game reflected subaltern cultural, ethnic, and religious pulses of local communities. Finance needs, as well as expenditure and media exposure, were ultimately limited.
Since 1992, the football industry has been heavily commercialized, following a new wave of “Third Way” politics that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. In theory, neoliberal politics underscored values of neutrality, equality, and universalism in the stadium by which incidents lapsing after 10 minutes become ‘history’ and spectators are supposed to ‘unsee’ personal, communal, and national backgrounds while immersed in the game’s ‘here and now’. As Joe Kennedy, an academic at the University of Sussex ,  explains, the “popular modernism” of football was founded around ‘its impermanence, transience and erasure’2 .
Football in the branded and newly liberalized world figured Al From’s words3 of a global anti-left modernity that fostered private sector economic growth. Clubs turned from community-oriented grassroot associations into companies with multi-national outlook that sell ‘football experience’ to new and wealthier spectators, draw upon lucrative sponsorship deals and extend lines of franchises and businesses within the sports community- e.g., clothing, boots, food, travel, tourism, parking, and even sex. This has allowed more money circulation and increased spending on players, media, stadiums, and tools. To the anger of loyal club members, players have become international commodities sold and bought in the football market; their close bonds with middle class communities have given way to shirts, slogans, flags, and other symbolic commodities now entitled to tie fan groups to popular players. After the Bosman ruling in 1995, football has shifted its emphasis to capital investment rather than redistribution, a trend that elevated few clubs into tycoons and pushed others down to bottom4 . Instead of marketing a sound ‘football experience’ in which investment pushes national juniors into the starting line-ups, the profit-driven industry discriminates against poor spectators, fosters disparity between local/national and international clubs, and creates a few fortunate and a majority of less invested, usually low-paid African and Asian, players, thus compromising the sports’ quality and self-fulfillment. Class, culture, and race became primary identifiers of the new ‘Calcio Moderni’5 in clear contrast to the game’s initial core values “community and equal opportunity for all”6 .
Then, it is no wonder that Ahly fan groups have been fiercely disappointed about Al Sheikh entrance to the Egyptian football industry. Flows of private investment, while reflecting regional power politics, aimed to undermine the national ego of millions and turned everyday matches into tension. The Saudi billionaire’s 2.5 million EGP support for Al Ahly club was traded for honorary presidency with unilateral control of signings and finance. So when disputes with Mahmoud al-Khateeb 7 occurred, the issue was taken to courts before al-Sheikh decides to avenge himself differently.
His next move was to buy Al Assiouty Sport Club, a local facility in Beni Souef established in 2008. The club was hardly promoted in 2014 to the Egyptian Premier League and has never posed any serious threat to Egypt’s two mega clubs, Al Ahly and Zamalek, nor Al-Masry of Port Said. Few smaller clubs such as El-Mokaweloon Al-Arab and Smouha used to grow fanbases and talents for greater clubs. Al Assiouty was suddenly relocated to Cairo, rebranded as Pyramids FC, and Al Sheikh rained some 33 million Euros ($38m) on signings of 23 players and technical staff. The all-time- African record has rocked the Egyptian football market. Videos and viral advertising challenged cash-deprived state-controlled clubs while depriving private clubs of comparable opportunities to sign football talents. The Pyramid’s purchases drew upon the Brazilian market, remarkably, Carlos Eduardo from Goias, Ribamar from Atletico Paranaense and Arthur from Chapecoense whose transfers costed $2.5-6 million, in addition to Keno, the Palmeiras midfielder who arrived at Egypt for 8.6 million euros and Rodriguinho, Corinthians’ attacking midfielder. No Egyptian club has ever spent this amount in one transfer and none has drawn so heavily on the Brazilian market.
In addition to promising and popular talents like Omar Gaber, Danny Schahin and Omar al-Medani, the transfers were coupled by a domestic raid that grabbed star-names and technical talents from local leagues, most notably Zamalek’s Ahmed Tawfiq and Ali Gabr, Mohamed Farouk from El-Mokaweloon, Abdoullah Bakry from Smouha, Mohamed Magdy Kafsha from ENPPI, and other players from Petrojet, El-Dakhleia, El-Marrikh, Tanta, Ismaily and Al-Masry. Hossam Al-Badry, the former Al-Ahly manager, was hired as the club’s chairman and Ahmed Hassan, Egypt’s most popular international, was signed the club’s spokesman and football team supervisor. The club was supported by a satellite channel ‘Pyramids’ capped with famous sportscasters, namely Midhat Shalaby, to enable worldwide exposure of the club’s tournaments.
What seemed as a take-over of the Egyptian industry and a strong intention to deplete buyable resources has deeply affected Al Ahly’s ability to recap Abdullah al-Saiid’s absence and put clubs subjected or peripheral relation with the wealthy and mighty Pyramids. Relations with competitors never addressed the investment in youth talents or improve of stadiums/equipment. Rather, managers were offered cash and in-kind gifts to accord the Pyramid’s supremacy or beat its foe. Some clubs turned over al-Sheikh’s offers, namely Al Portsaiidi Al-Masry, Pyramid’s competitor in local games, of half a million EGP after conquering Algerian Ittihad Al-Asima club in CAF Confederation Cup. Zamalek recieved clothing worth 8 million EGP and three signings of Hamdy Al-Naqaz ($1m), Cristian Gross (50m EGP), and Sasy Fargani (9m EGP), Al Ittihad Al Sakandary’s president Mohamed Mosilhy was offered similar gifts while Ittihad al-Sekka al-Hadid was offered half a million EGP.
The Saudi minister also strived to affect game results by pushing double-standards in counting his club goals during the Pyramids-Ittihad al-Sakandary match early 2018. His request of foreign referees, who ironically arrived in 12 hours to the Egyptian Premier League, was mocked by a twitter hashtag calling it a ‘Morgan-Ahmed-Morgan” League 8. Al-Sheikh took aim at national sports figures, retired trainers and star players, some of whom had trained Saudi’s national team, urging more popular anger via hashtag ‘Sudiya Lemmy Shwalek – Saudi Arabia, pull your sack’ that swept twitter and signed the ends of al-Sheikh’s messy adventures.

A compromised  tension…

Despite all efforts to redress football in a capitalist, value-free and multicultural context, fans have always arrived at stadium with their fears, ambitions, grieve, and political leanings. Local and national identities contest and struggle during games, even in developed countries. When the national team in Netherland bet Germany in the semi-final of European Cup in 1988, nationwide ceremonies represented a retribution of the German occupation of Netherlands in WWII9 . The case in Egypt draws upon similar metaphors. When al-Sheikh scorned Egypt’s popular sports figure and former trainers of Saudi Arabia’s national team Taha Ismail, a sweeping campaign addressed the history of Egyptian professionals- doctors, engineers, teachers, and sports trainers- whose efforts have built today’s modern life in the Kingdom. The popular defense of national pride has, again, contested the dynamics of economic globalization. Nevertheless, al-Sheikh’s attempts to lord over the Egyptian sports were as offensive as the national clubs enforcing of neutral and disciplined football culture that enable smoother penetration of foreign investment while appeasing Egyptian authorities and security apparatus.
In relation to fan groups, club administrations follow a liberalized political and moral policy by which language, appearance, attitudes, class, and cultural specificities of spectators are neutralized and commodified to tolerate investment/profit- driven industry and increase advertising and sales revenues from shirts, flags, and highly-commercialized commodities. The relation with fans has turned from a two-way stakeholder/member vs. manager to a producer-consumer; sports are to be consumerable by promoting a ‘universalistic modes of altruistic co-identification’ 10 in which fans’ clothing, chants, body movements, and consumption attitudes are molded and neutralized to ensure popular acceptance of football, powered with foreign investment and mirroring  the preferable high-culture. Hence, the local identity of sub-urban clubs is down tuned to allow greater consumption and high-priced broadcast and advertising revenues. Also, in this value-free football experience, politely seated and neatly clothed middle-class or wealthy consumers are favored over poor indigenous cheerers who protest higher ticket prices and player transfers, use obscene chants and violent attitudes, and conceive clubs and players as untradeable collective properties- the smaller the better. Also, in this experience, consumers are to focus on the game’s ‘here and now’ and neglect societal and/or historical grieves that create bias against particular sources of funding or international players- e.g., Israeli teams.
Because the majority of Ahly spectators come from poor/grassroot background, the club’s relationship to Ahly fan groups have always been double edged. The administration needs to boost players’ enthusiasm in televised tournaments while, on the other, seeking a placeable, tolerant, wealthier and ‘presentable’ spectatorship culture, both leading to increased revenues from exclusive television broadcasting, this year traded for over 400 million EGP11 , commercial sponsorship, and greater multi-national investment and partnership opportunities.
Even smaller and sub-urban clubs have followed these disciplining and financial policies because membership fees and assistance from the National Sports Council cover only a small portion of spending leaving administration councils in dire need for activity marketing, businessmen contributions, advertisement deals, and foreign investment opportunities. The trend was further strengthened by pressures by the authoritarian security apparatus whom ultra-fan groups have repeatedly scorned in stadiums and streets before and after 2013.
As football turns Orwellian inside stadiums and club authorities distance themselves from defiant spectators, as appeared in the Ahly administration’s unwillingness to defend its fan groups during and after Port Saiid massacre in 2012, the crisis between Khateeb and al-Sheikh drew attention to the importance of having a loyal organized fanbase that defends the club in times of crisis. This, while having particular tributes to Khateeb’s characteristic diplomacy as Al Ahly president,  was reflected in a new bylaw published in September 2018 that details rules and conditions for establishing fan groups whose finance and administration are to follow the club administration in return of protection and defense of fans’ rights.

The demon in stadiums….

Since 2011, Egyptian authorities, sports figures, and sportscasters have sought to punish and shame the ultras’ seemingly defiant and organized community12 . Mortada Mansour, Zamalek FC president and the one who successfully sued Ultras Ahlawy to outlaw the group on terrorism grounds, accused the group of receiving ‘cash’ payments to scorn al-Sheikh  and thus depriving the country of ongoing and promising investment opportunities. Medhat Shalaby, who previously called them a group of ‘scumbags’ claimed that a small minority of 7 members are the ones who fired these chants and, earlier, accused the group of killing the 74 victims of Portsaiid massacre.
The attacks on TV shows conforms to state authorities and media columnists’ depiction of a violent, immoral, and anarchist group and to their efforts to demark the acceptable fandom community. News are normally folded in a highly normative language, e.g., Al Youm Al Sabe’ new on 10th July 2018 ‘renewal of detention of 9 ultras members on grounds of joining an outlawed organization and inciting demonstrations against authorities’, Abdul-Fattah Abdul-Muni’m depicts an all-time definition of ultra-fans as “a group of thugs who takes advantage of the state’s weakness to incite violence and chaos in the service of Egypt’s enemies… using an obscene language to pursue destruction and vandalization”. News are folded provocatively to cripple the group’s popular appeal, e.g., “Al Ahly closes its social facilities in Al Gazeera because of the Ultras” whom efforts, the article described, the club has called to heighten the players’ spirit before a match with Al Taragy in Tunisia. Other news incite state violence against the group because ‘they terrorize sports figures who unleash their sinister plans and face the group’s unprecedented crimes and support of all anarchist, extremist, and terrorist organizations’. Another all-time discourse is that the groups ‘is penetrated by darkness bats (referring the Muslim Brothers) who seek to destroy us altogether, and because they are mostly aged in high school and university grades they fall an easy ‘prey’ to the terrorist organization’s recruitment attempts”.
This being considered, the most insightful report was published in 9th of July 2018 just before allowing the return of fans to the stadiums. The ideas and language calls surprising references to Foucault’s fine-tuned concept of ‘bio-power’, here exercised by state authorities to lord over the fans’ own interests and bring them in-line with those of the state- an internationally presentable fandom culture fit for global business-powered and profit-driven tournaments. In this way, authorities offer promises of self-redemption and material happiness for investors, use fans’ enthusiasm (feelings), voice and words to boost business, present a preferable image of Egypt to the world, and accord its legitimacy by absolute domestication of defiant groups.
Scripts of the report reads as follows:
[….Ashraf Sobhy, the Sports Minister said “fans must return to the stadiums in a specific form worthy of Egypt’s name, as in the African and World cups, which is the form that the ministry supports’ adding that the ministry will take unprecedented preparations and equip stadiums with cameras, online ticket reservation and electronic gates, while the Football Union must raise fans’ awareness about the correct application to avoid re-banning their attendance’ he added ‘we study a proposal to allow university students’ attendance to Super League matches to benefit from the youth’s enthusiasm while ensuring they won’t go off script’ (para 6-7).
Mostafa Younis, former football star of Al Ahly FC, said “it must be announced that only cheerers are welcomed; anyone going off script must be held accountable, must be slaughtered, and must receive severe punishment” (para 13)
Rabi’ Yasin, former Al Ahly star said “fans should be returned to stadiums gradually and in few numbers until they prove good intentions. When they prove they will serve the League’s benefit and Egypt’s image we will allow their full return” (para 17)
Ayman Younis, former football star of Zamalek, proposed ‘a committee by the Youth and Sports Ministry including law, interior and defense professionals to issue a bylaw of rules and conditions that controls fans’ return to stadiums and ensures they behave presentably and exalt Egypt’s image as in the World Cup in Russia’. The Philosopher added ‘if we want to change the fans’ behavior we must provide entertainment means. We should provide good services inside the stadiums, add numbers to seats and recruit security watch keepers.  Also, tickets must be repriced to reflect the newly added services, security rules printed on their backs, and the lowest ticket should worth 100, instead of 70, EGP” (para 18-9)
Jamal Abdul-Hamid, another former football star, said “anyone gets out off script must be set as an example. In all matches taking place abroad, no one gets off script. Everyone abides by the system. Nobody should be excused on grounds of young age, the sports law must be applied particularly to fans riots” (para 20-21)….] Meanwhile, the circulated image of the ultra-fans as a group of violent, anarchist, or terrorist thugs correlates with the content of news reported on international counterparts.  For example, the same journal reports on the Spanish police’s breaking into a training match responding to fans riot inside the stadium, and hails the Italian authorities firmness regarding the sell of tickets and Russia’s ban of ultra-fans attendance to 2018 World Cup. While no resonance occurs between Italian and Spanish fan groups’ violence and their Egyptian counterparts, the journal serves a justificatory message of state violence by setting inclusive and exclusive boundary lines of the acceptable fandom. Through media, the state dictates its preferable values and morality to constitute a ‘fabric of life’ in which discipline and passivity along with strict avoidance of violence against authorities, all form a new fabric of modern football life13 .

Nationalism re-imagined …

The communal nature of football is the primary source of instability in the game’s economic and political structures. As a cultural collective practice, the traditional neighborhood activity has always destabilized authorities, club administrations, and investors’ policies, and the fact that Al Ahly FC was established in 1907, that it honored the country in countless leagues and competitions and contributed to its independence from the British occupation has served a strong background for the ultra-fans’ imagined community, in which the stadium is set central to shared past and foreseen futures and where ‘groupness, closeness of  social and economic class, the love for the team and club, the maximization of fun, shared enjoyment located in “temporal and spatial affordances”14 and a sweeping identification with freedom and national and masculine pride, along with heightened organizational commitment, all blend and stand in clear opposition to the state-sponsored image of a demonized group, its effort to domesticate and appropriate its voice, and the globalized milieu of capitalized football. Reporting to Ibraheem, one ultras member said “Ultras Against Modern football” 15 . The group believes that football is played for the people and that their ultimate mission is defending the rights of fans against the greediness of sponsors, player brokers and sports media. In their view, Al Ahly FC receives an absolute and uncompromising value, something to battle and die for while the curva is the imagined space for heroic masculine nationalism16 . When authorities took aim at the group to discipline its verbal and physical attitudes so to accord its preferable fandom model, a striking contradiction occurred between their national conscience and the state’s definition of nationalism as a ‘militarization’ process in which discipline, punishment, and demoralization are daily rulership strategies and where foreign investment takes priority over popular pleasure.

Language subverted…

In fact, punishment over obscenity and taboo language has less to do with behavior and wording than the affective experience of laughter as an act of “misplaced sense of moral superiority”17. Descartes explains that “Derision or scorn is a sort of joy mingled with hatred, which proceeds from our perceiving some small evil in a person whom we consider to be deserving of it; we have hatred for this evil, we have joy in seeing it in him who is deserving of it”18 . Had masses not laughed, applauded and circulated the chants taking aim of al-Sheikh and his channel’s sportscaster, the authorities would not have detained the cheerers. Here, punishment is meant to delineate between appropriate and inappropriate responses by “codifying the social contexts for which a person should be shocked, offended, challenge an obscenity, or laugh and enjoy an obscene encounter”19 . In practice, this has proved impossible. Just as stealing flags and shirts of the Ultra group by another is dishonoring and provokes inter-group fights, so is the state’s appropriation of fun, the control of humans’ feelings, bodies and spontaneous communal behavior, and stealing of local enterprises by foreign business tycoons, as dishonoring acts that calls for equitable performative counter-dishonoring. Here, reference to women’s body, abhorrible as it seems, takes a central position in the language of a primarily masculine community that exalts players’ physical excellency by “showing” ‘physical’ valiancy to peers and rivals and beating up the police ‘men’ in fights before, during and after the 25th January uprisings20 . Meanwhile, verbal obscenity, compared to situational and imagery, resonates with a nation-wide repetitive and theatrical practising which is attributable to masculinity of all ‘men’, including the security officers. To punish and constrain the use of sexist language in football stadiums must be a policy of every respected government, but the situation in Egypt bears much to oppression, social discrimination, and business greed than to protection of public morals.
Thereof, when considering policy recommendations, one should address two levels. The first includes setting up investment regulation policies that ensure sound distribution of opportunities between local and national clubs, investment in national young professionals, promoting culturally-sensitive investments, and protection of spectators’ rights. The second concerns with public policies aiming at prohibition of imagery, verbal and situational sexism through education, media, and political socialization that address all society members and different institutional levels.  Nevertheless, the current regime has taken enmity not only with the majority of Egyptians, but also traditional norms and values. The case of banning Amal Fathi the human rights activist who was a victim of sexual harassment for ‘defaming Egypt’s image’, after sharing a video where she relates the incident to overall socio-economic conditions, remains an anecdote to a sequence of policies and practices that support moral deterioration, suppress of local cultural repertoires, and elitizing the game against the will of masses.

footnotes