Salah E-Book

Cyril Collot

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Luca Caioli
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 265

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Mohamed Salah needed little time to settle in to life at Liverpool.   Since signing for the Anfield club in 2017 for a then-club record fee, he has broken the club's scoring record for a debut season, as well as becoming the leading goalscorer in Europe's top five leagues, overtaking Lionel Messi and Harry Kane.  He was the first player to ever win three Premier League Player of the Month awards in the same season and was the winner of the PFA Player's Player of the Year for 2017–18, scoring 32 goals in 36 league games.  In this biography of the Egypt and Liverpool star, bestselling authors Luca Caioli and Cyril Collot examine his rise to success. Up to date with Russia World Cup 2018 analysis and featuring exclusive interviews and behind-the-scenes details.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title Page1Quite a history2Son of a jasmine trader3The first signature4The long journey5A year of great change6Port Said7A done deal8Picasso9Already on his way10Chelsea11The Egyptian campaign12Caput mundi13Magical nights14From Libreville to Liverpool15A pacey winger16The 94th minute17Living a dream18Tears and anger19Two goals are not enough20HopeAcknowledgementsPlatesAbout the authorsCopyright

Chapter 1

Quite a history

It was all the fault of the pharaohs and the English.

Take Amenhotep II, seventh monarch of the eighteenth dynasty. An inscription on the Stele of Archery, discovered near the Sphinx, reads: ‘he mastered horse riding and there was no one like him […] His bow could not be bent by anyone and no one could catch him in the races.’ That was not all: it was also said of the sovereign – who reigned over Egypt from 1427 to 1401 BC – that he could handle a 30-foot long oar. Quite an undertaking.

Amenhotep II was not the only athlete pharaoh.

Take Ramesses II (1279–13 bc), one of the most powerful and famous rulers. On the obelisk in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo, he is described as ‘Lord of the Panegirie’, a Greek word used to refer to athletic contests in Ancient Egypt. He is said to have been an impeccable archer, who was skilled at chariot racing, rode camels and horses and was unbeatable at swordsmanship.

Were these isolated cases? No. All rulers, including Hatshepsut, the second female pharaoh (1479–57 BC), had to complete a three-lap race around two ritual constructions. For many the ceremony represented a primitive Olympics, for others a symbolic rite of rejuvenation for the pharaoh, who justified his or her power in front of courtiers and the gods. The event was held every three years from the 30th year of their reign. It may not have been an Olympiad in the modern sense, but it does demonstrate how important athletic prowess was both for demigods such as the pharaohs and for young Egyptians needing to temper their physique and character.

Wrestling, boxing, horse riding, archery, running, long jump, high jump, javelin throwing, weightlifting, fencing with poles and sticks, swimming and rowing were the most popular and widely practised disciplines. There were precise rules of competition, ‘sports facilities’ built ad hoc, impartial referees, or at least proclaimed as such, and different coloured uniforms to distinguish the teams. The winners were rewarded with large collars that covered their chest and shoulders. Even the losers were recognised for their competitive spirit in a style worthy of Pierre de Coubertin. See, for example, the report of a race, there and back, between the Royal Palace of Memphis and the Faiyum Oasis, held in the sixth year of the reign of the Pharaoh Taharqa (690–667 BC). The stele erected to commemorate the event recalls that the ruler personally accompanied the race on his chariot, through the desert and, after the race, ‘distinguished the first among them to arrive and arranged for him to eat and drink with his bodyguards. He distinguished those others who were just behind him and rewarded them with all manner of things.’

Ball games deserve a chapter in their own right. Many different kinds of balls have been discovered in Egyptian tombs. Made of wood, clay and leather, stitched and filled with straw, strips of papyrus or pressed palm leaves. With diameters ranging from three to nine centimetres, these also included coloured balls and some that were extremely heavy. Yet they are seemingly handled with ease by the figures in the painting in the main chamber of the tomb of the Governor Baqet III (circa 2000 BC) in the necropolis of Beni Hasan to the south of Cairo. Four girls, two on the shoulders of their partners, are depicted throwing and catching spheres. It was a pastime that seems to have been reserved for, or at least favoured by women. Boys preferred to hit a ball with a palm stick, similar in shape to the ones used in modern day field hockey. But this was not merely a game for young people. During the eighteenth dynasty, under the reign of Thutmose III (1481–25 BC), one of the great leaders and strategists of Egyptian history, a ritual came into being and was documented on the walls of the Temple of Deir el-Bahari: in the presence of a deity (usually Hathor), the king hits the ball with a stick, symbolically destroying the devil’s eye of the serpent god Apophis.

Speaking of balls … Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the Greek historian who travelled along the Nile in around 450 BC, described the scene of a group of young men kicking a ball made of goatskin and straw in the second book of his Histories (Euterpe). In short, as was true of many other ancient civilisations – from China to Japan, from Imperial Rome to the peoples of Mesoamerica – playing with a ball was both ritual and entertainment in the Egypt of the pharaohs. But it was the British who turned a game played for centuries and centuries into a sport. They formalised it, dictated its rules, stamped it with the label ‘football’ and exported it all over the world. In 1863, thirteen delegates from clubs in England and Scotland met at the Freemasons’ Tavern in London to found the Football Association and to set down the laws of the world’s most popular sport in black and white. Nineteen years later, the British invaded Egypt in support of the Khedivate to counter the rise of nationalism, thereby gaining control of the Suez Canal, a maritime route vital to the British Empire. They exported their game, their rules and their customs. Football arrived with the occupying troops. The British soldiers built pitches and set up goals on their bases. The Egyptians looked at them strangely at first – as was the case more or less everywhere – dismissing them as mad Englishmen. They collapsed into fits of laughter when they saw the soldiers in shorts running around after a ball. But things changed quickly and puzzled looks soon turned into imitation. Football spread like wildfire from the cities. The first Egyptian team was formed in 1883, principally of players from Cairo, under the leadership of its captain Mohamed Effendi Nashed. They challenged the British, their masters and mentors, winning on several occasions – at least according to Egyptian reports, which add, perhaps with more than a touch of nationalism, that Nashed’s eleven beat their foreign occupiers, at least symbolically. Nine years on football experienced a boom. In 1892, physical education in schools became compulsory, a decision that led to the formation of a great many football teams.

The dawn of the 20th century saw the birth of the country’s great clubs. The Al Ahly club was founded as a sports club for Cairo’s students on 24 April 1907. Its first president was Englishman Michael Inse. On 5 January 1911, also in the capital, a Belgian lawyer George Marzbach founded Qasr Al-Nil, a club for non-British expatriates. The club was open to everyone, Egyptians and foreigners; no one was excluded for ethnic, economic or social reasons. In 1952, after several changes of name, it became known definitively after the district that occupies the northern part of the island of Gezira: Zamalek.

Al Ahly and Zamalek, the two teams that have dominated Egyptian and African football ever since. Thirty-nine league titles, 36 Egypt Cups and twenty international trophies for the Red Devils of Al Ahly; twelve league titles, 25 Egypt Cups and five African Champions Leagues for the White Nights of Zamalek. Derbies at the Cairo International Stadium have been known to attract up to 100,000 spectators.

But let’s go back to the early years of the last century. On 11 September 1916, representatives of the British forces and the Egyptian clubs met in Cairo to form the EEFA, the Egyptian-English Football Association. The first official competition was held that same year: the Sultani Cup, under the patronage of Sultan Hussein Kamel, was open to British and local teams. The British won the first five editions, a domination interrupted in the 1921–22 season by the club that would go on to become Zamalek.

On 21 May 1923, Egypt was the first Arab nation and the first African country to join FIFA. This is not its only record. It was also the first African nation to participate in an Olympics, in Belgium in 1920, when its team lost 2–1 to Italy in the qualifying round in Ghent; it was also the first to play in a World Cup, in Italy in 1934, where it lost 4–2 in its opening game against Hungary, but gave birth to the first star of African football: Abdulrahman Fawzi, who scored two goals for the Pharaohs. It would also be the first country to win the Africa Cup of Nations in 1957. Egypt beat Ethiopia in the final 4–0, with a brace from El-Diba, who scored all four goals and became the top scorer with a total of five throughout the competition.

Nine years later, on 22 October 1948, the first Egyptian league was played under the auspices of King Farouk I. Eleven teams took part: Al Ahly, Farouk (now Zamalek), Al Sekka Al Hadid, Tersana, Ismaily, Misri, Port Fouad, Olympic, Ittihad, Tram and Yunan. Al Ahly eventually took home the 30-kilogram silver champions trophy.

More than 70 years have passed since then. Egypt has lived through the coup d’etat led by Mohamed Nagib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1952 and the end of the reign of King Farouk I. It has suffered the Six-Day War, which, in 1967, led to the defeat of Egyptian troops and the occupation, by the Israelis, of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. There was also the Yom Kippur War against the State of Israel in October 1973. The entire nation saw the death of Anwar Sadat broadcast live, when the president was assassinated on 6 October 1981 during a military parade in Cairo. It suffered the 30-year government of Hosni Mubarak. It was filled with hope during the 2011 revolution of Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring. It witnessed the fall of President Mubarak and voted in the presidential elections of 2012 that gave victory to Mohamed Morsi, a candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood. It suffered another coup d’etat by General Abdel Fatteḥ el-Sisi, who dismissed Mohamed Morsi and was proclaimed president of the republic. It mourned the thousands of victims of the protests at the Rabaa massacre in August 2013. Abdel Fatteḥ el-Sisi now rules over the country with an iron fist and, in the presidential elections of 28 March 2018, ridiculed by many observers, obtained 97 per cent of the vote.

What about football? According to Bob Bradley, manager of the Egyptian national side from 2011 to 2013: ‘When you come here, you get a real sense of how football is part of all this. You realise how football and politics are totally connected.’ Football is the mirror of a complex society: an instrument used by regimes to cement loyalty and nationalism, an element of distraction from the difficulties of everyday life and a laboratory for new ideas and rebellions. In these 70 years, football has established itself as both the great passion and the great folly of the Egyptians. It has served up successes and dramas alike. Seven African Cups won by the Pharaohs national side and the Port Said riot of 1 February 2012. A postponement of the Egyptian league, matches behind closed doors and, in February 2015, before the game between Zamalek and ENPPI, yet another massacre. It has produced clubs like Al Ahly, with 50 million fans and 23,000 spectators per game, ‘the African team of the twentieth century,’ according to the Confederation of African Football. It has also witnessed the birth of the White Knights (UWK), the Zamalek Ultras, one of the most turbulent fringes of Egyptian fans and one of the leading groups in the 2011 uprisings. It has trained players such as Mohamed Aboutrika, the philosopher, the legend, the midfielder who delivered three African Cups for his country and has ultimately been exiled, accused of suspicious ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Or Hossam Hassan, the Maradona of the Nile: 69 goals for his national team. Or Ahmed Hassan, with a record number of caps for his country (184, to be precise). Or even Essam el-Hadary, the oldest player to have ever played in the final stages of a World Cup (aged 45 years and 161 days), at Russia 2018; and Mido, or Ahmed Hossam Hussein Abdelhamid, the unruly genius. The latest pharaoh, the latest hero celebrated in modern Egypt, is Mohamed Salah. He is the footballer who shows the clean face of the country, the good Muslim who triumphs in the land of the former occupiers, subverting the feeling of inferiority instilled by the colonialists, the man who tells children never to stop dreaming or believing in their dreams, the symbol of hope and the collective joy for a people tired economically, politically and socially.

Chapter 2

Son of a jasmine trader

Fields of flowering jasmine to the right; green maize plants to the left. On the edge of the dirt road that cuts through the countryside, a cart pulled by a donkey is being driven by an old man with a white beard, a cream jellabiya and a white skullcap. A tuk-tuk speeds off quickly in a cloud of dust. And there, in the distance, the terracotta-coloured minarets and houses of Nagrig appear.

There are no signs announcing this Nile Delta village of some 15,000 inhabitants and 150 cultivated acres. Even those born nearby sometimes have to stop and ask for directions. Not to mention how long it takes to get here … Three hours to travel the 131 kilometres that separate Nagrig from Cairo. Bridges, elevated roads, clogged bypasses: getting out of the Egyptian capital is a mass of traffic and a cacophony of horns that never stops, day or night. A continuous concert in which the noise of the cars, tuk-tuks, overloaded minivans, lorries and buses merges with the gestures of drivers and pedestrians, who cross wherever they please with a simple wave of the hand to alert those behind the wheel. You can almost reach out and touch European cars from the 1960s, with German number plates on top of which Egyptian licences have been stuck haphazardly; vehicles rammed with children looking out of the windows, waving; motorbikes with four passengers and a veiled woman in the middle, holding a baby. Every now and then the Nile appears, along the Corniche. It slips away majestically, leaving its islands behind. Advertising hoardings spring up on all sides, getting bigger and bigger, more invasive and insistent. They hide ochre towers, skyscrapers and yet more skyscrapers, each one taller than the next in an attempt to exceed the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza. There is no escape from this city of more than 20 million; it follows you for miles and miles, even once you’re on the Agricultural Road to Alexandria. Houses and more red-brick houses, unfinished, with dark, empty windows. Piles and piles of bricks and cement bags, stacked up waiting for the money to come in so the work can be finished. Iron frameworks soar up and up, awaiting better times. Buildings that have been attempted before collapsing and being left there, monuments in the desert. Palm leaf roofs and satellite dishes; kids flying coloured kites and donkeys waiting to be put to work. Then, little by little, the green of the fertile land of the Nile Delta comes into view: tall palm trees in the distance, maize and alfalfa compete for space with illegally built houses. The train bound for Alexandria runs alongside. A sea of passengers perches between one wagon and the next, balancing precariously over the rails.

The motorway is lined by makeshift barbecues and vendors selling chargrilled corn. They weave in between the cars to offer their wares to the drivers. The road continues on into the Qalyubia Governorate, the city of Banha and, after the police checkpoints, the Monufia Governorate, the land of presidents. Anwar Sadat and Mubarak were both born in this region that was also originally home to the family of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. There are plenty of reminders of the president: banners stuck on poles along the road, bearing the face of the field marshal, perhaps left over from the elections of 28 March 2018. Once past the ‘triumphal arch’ of Tanta, capital of Gharbia, the road, which is bordered by cotton plantations, becomes narrow and full of potholes. Piles of plastic waste and even a dead and bloated horse lie at the side of the road. Rubbish of all kinds invades the banks and canals of the Nile as it cross the fields. Towns and villages come one after the other, displaying themselves like an open book: women offering up fish on straw mats; horse-drawn carts flashing yellow melons and watermelons; skinned lambs attached to hooks in butchers’ doorways; car dealers, where you can find everything from a chassis to an engine dismantled for parts; cafés, where only men are intent on peacefully smoking hookah pipes; narrow alleyways teeming with children. More fields and then finally the turn off for Nagrig.

You enter this fellaheen (peasant in Arabic) village along a dirt road, passing a cart pulled by a donkey. Towing a blotchy cow. It’s being driven by a boy, fourteen at most, wearing a red and yellow shirt, a Roma shirt, stamped with the number 11 and the name M. Salah. A few hundred yards further on, the monotony of the ochre of the earth and houses, the predominant colour, is broken by a luminous green. Behind a gate, surrounded by freshly painted orange walls, a brand new artificial football pitch is bordered by floodlights.

You would never expect to find anything like this in such a remote village. Three men are lying by the touchline, watching the kids play. One of the boys, waiting for a cross from his friend, is wearing the number 10 shirt of the Egyptian national team, again printed with the name Salah. When you ask for an explanation, the adults can’t agree: some say it was built by the army, others that it was Pepsi (Liverpool’s sponsor) who funded it. No one is in any doubt as to why though: as a tribute to their illustrious fellow citizen, Mohamed Salah, who was born in this village on 15 June 1992.

Walking along the village’s dirt roads and alleyways, where roaring motorbikes, cars, carts, cows, donkeys, horses and stray dogs live side by side, you tunnel through a spider’s web of cables hanging down all over the place; you pass in front of shops selling anything and everything; of houses with colourful, gilded balconies, like opera boxes, or half-built constructions and those decorated with scenes of flora and fauna. Many have simple paintings on their façades: planes, boats, coaches and the Kaaba, reminders that the owners have fulfilled the duty of every devout Muslim, to visit Mecca at least once in their lifetime. A pilgrimage to and around the house of God that gives everyone the opportunity to ask for forgiveness for their sins, to repent and to purify themselves. Veiled women and men in Western dress or jellabiyas smile and wave at visitors. They are down-to-earth, friendly and helpful. Curious but not angered by the sudden popularity of Nagrig due to the rise of the Pharaoh’s number 10 and Liverpool’s number 11.

Before journalists and cameramen from all over the world arrived to see where Mo grew up and kicked his first football, Nagrig was known for growing red onions and the jasmine that is exported to France, Russia and Ukraine to be used in the perfume industry. And for having been the birthplace, back in 1810, when the village was still called Nagrid, of Sheikh Muhammad Ayyad al-Tantawi, who emigrated from the Nile Delta to Russia in 1840; seven years later, he became Chair of Arabic Studies at Saint Petersburg University. Ayyad al-Tantawi wrote an interesting account of the first ten years of his life spent in an immense country so different from his own. Entitled Tuhfat al-adhkiya’ bi-akhhar bilad al-Rusiya (The Precious Gift of the Sharp-Witted in the News about the Russian Land), it offers a picture of Czarist Russia and the culture and customs of its people. He was a great scholar but not the global star Mo Salah is today. The story comes, animatedly, from the footballer’s parents’ neighbours.

Sitting on the porch, an elderly woman with a little girl and a man busy with a motorbike and trailer talk about the many foreigners and Egyptians who have been to see Mo and his family’s home. Three storeys, grey concrete with rounded balconies like the seats on rides at a country fair; nothing special apart from the bolted gate overlooked by two CCTV cameras. They must be the only cameras in the village. Mo’s family are not there, explains Um Ali, a neighbour opposite. They could be in Cairo or England, but what he does know is that they decided to escape the siege of journalists and scroungers some time ago.

The story of Mo and the land where he grew up is told by Maher Anwar, Mayor of Nagrig. He lives on the second floor of a corner house. Bags of onions hang drying up the stairs. One of his daughters answers the door; apparently her father has gone to a nearby village but will be back soon. He returns after about half an hour. The man of the house removes his shoes on the doorstep and makes his guests comfortable in the lounge: gold sofas and armchairs, floral patterned rugs and green curtains like sacred vestments. With a salt and pepper moustache, glasses with a thin frame, a white jellabiya and a placid, smiling face, the first citizen of Nagrig offers his visitors a drink and begins to talk.

‘Mo was born to a good family. His father was a government official and one of the biggest jasmine exporters in the area. His mother worked in an office. They’re a family who love football. Salah Hamed Mehrez Zaki Ghali, Mo’s father, played here in the amateur team at the village youth club in the 80s and 90s. He was a good defender. His uncle wasn’t bad either. Who knows, maybe that’s where he got his passion from? With his brother and sister, Mo grew up happy. Like so many other Egyptian children, when he was seven or eight, he would spend hours and hours playing football in the street, on the youth club pitch or at school. When he was ten or twelve, he was fast and talented. His potential was obvious. It was spotted by Ghamry Abdel Hamid el-Saadany, one of his first coaches, and his father. They took him to El Mahalla, the largest town in the region, for a trial but Baladeyet (a second division Egyptian league club) didn’t want him. He was too small and puny. He ended up at Ittihad Basyoun, the team in a village a few kilometres away. Then one day a scout came to the club and told the boys to play a match so he could watch them. He’d come to see a different boy, Sherif, but when he saw Mo he was impressed and offered him the chance to go and play for Osmanson Tanta. That’s where Salah began his adventure in Egyptian then in European football.’

This is the mayor’s version. Others claim Liverpool’s number 10 was discovered at a school futsal tournament sponsored by Pepsi. This theory is flatly dismissed in Tanta.

Maher Anwar has other guests waiting for him. A reporter from a Swiss German daily newspaper is waiting her turn in the hall. ‘Journalists come here from all over the world,’ the mayor says. ‘We’re happy about it and we thank Salah for making our village famous across the globe.’

What do his citizens think about all this interest? ‘Nagrig,’ he answers calmly, ‘is a village like many others in the Nile Delta, but it is characterised by the friendliness and goodness of its people.’

They don’t mind that they’ve become a tourist destination for the international media. One last question. What does Salah represent for Nagrig? ‘Hope, not just for his people but for Egypt and Africa as a whole. He’s an example of how far you can go, what you can do in life with effort and passion.’

A few yards from the mayor’s house, in the corner of a little square, the barber’s shop is packed. With music playing in the background, the customers wait outside to get their hair and beards trimmed. Between one cut and the next, Ahmed Ramadan is happy to tell us about his friendship with Salah and their shared passion: ‘We used to play football near the school. We would always challenge each other, one-on-one. We’d start playing and then other boys would join in. People would come and watch. Mohamed shone even then but there were lots of boys who were good and people would say they would go to one club or another. We both ended up at Ittihad Basyoun. Then he went on to become what he’s become, but he hasn’t changed. He’s still a modest and simple boy, a good person.’

The barber’s impression is confirmed by Mustafa: ‘Whenever he comes back to Nagrig you see him on the street. He goes to the café or the mosque to pray like anyone else. He’s certainly not someone who goes around with a bodyguard.’

‘He plays ping pong and billiards here in the café and is happy to have selfies with the kids who ask, or to sign autographs,’ says Mohamed Bassyoni, a childhood friend who remembers when he used to play with Mo and his brother Nasr. He insists on the fact that even if Salah is now a footballer who is famous around the world, he doesn’t act like it and is not ashamed of his origins.

‘Mohamed has stayed on the straight and narrow thanks to his family and the customs of our village. He visits neighbours and relatives for celebrations like Eid al-Fitr. He came to visit me during Ramadan to see how I was. I’d had a car accident, nothing serious. He’s very attached to the village where he grew up.’ The mayor remembers one example: ‘Mo got married in Cairo but they celebrated here afterwards and everyone was invited. The village loves Salah because he has done and continues to do a lot for it.’

To find out more it is worth going to talk to Mohamed el-Bahnasy. In a long, narrow alleyway leading to one of the village’s many mosques, he can be found behind the desk of his book and stationery shop. Hello Kitty diaries, cardboard printed with red hearts, holy books, calendars and posters of Mohamed Salah occupy the walls and shelves of the tiny shop. With a grey beard, thinning hair, a white tunic and the air of a wise old man, el-Bahnasy – in agreement with Mo’s father, uncle and brother – manages 50,000 Egyptian pounds from the Mohamed Salah Charitable Foundation every month. ‘It goes to widows, orphans, large families with very little support, and to the hospitals,’ he says, showing a book covered in dense blue writing. It lists the names of those requesting assistance. ‘We study every case and decide whether to contribute financially. But this is only a part of Salah’s donations: there’s a secret part he gives, as a good Muslim, but no one knows who he is helping and it has to remain a secret.’ The wise old sage puts the book back down on the table, adjusts his glasses and adds: ‘Given the economic situation Egyptians are suffering, we need men like Salah to help people.’

Yes, the economic situation … In June 2018, the Cairo government announced fresh cuts to electricity subsidies and steep rises in petrol and cooking gas. A few months earlier, there had been increases in drinking water prices and recent years have seen cuts to flour, bread and milk subsidies – one of the austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Foundation in exchange for a loan of $12 billion. A neo-liberalist strategy intended to stabilise the economy and attract new investment; a policy of reforms and austerity that signified a sharp cut in wages and a severe blow to standards of living among the middle and poorest classes.

El-Bahnasy is right to repeat again and again that the help provided by the Liverpool number 11 is very important with things as they are. He says: ‘Salah is a gift from Allah. With his help he has become a trader in happiness.’

It is a shame the media, not just in Egypt, have exaggerated reports of Salah’s good work: millions and millions of Egyptian pounds to build schools, refurbish hospitals and mosques, to donate a dialysis machine and an ambulance, to help young couples get married, to be injected into the development fund founded by President el-Sisi. Much of it is true, but not all of it, such as the 8 million Egyptian pounds Salah is said to have allocated to buy and donate a five-acre plot for the building of a water purification plant. ‘Fake news,’ explains el-Bahnasy. ‘It created false hope and disillusionment for many.’

The owner of the small bookshop has nothing further to add. But many in the village are quick to recall that people came from the neighbouring regions in search of charity, an endless pilgrimage in search of help that does not come from the government. ‘The Salah family were confined to their house and if Mo had been a bank he would have gone bankrupt,’ the mayor points out, sarcastically. The motivations and importance of Salah’s charitable foundation now become clear.

Dark, wrinkled sods, grass scattered with ducks and hens, a long wall, a metal gate and a full-size football pitch: dirt, with a few sparse green patches. Almost an amphitheatre between red-brick houses and the minaret of the nearby mosque. This is the playing field of the Nagrig youth club, rechristened in tribute to Mohamed Salah after Egypt’s qualification for the 2018 World Cup. A boy rides across the pitch on a bike while a small group are kicking a ball around barefoot. The youngest boys and girls are the most curious. They come over to the new arrivals to ask for a photo in front of the centre’s mural of a smiling Mo. It is impressive and brightly coloured, even if the hands giving a ‘shaka’ sign are not all that convincing. But it matters little. They are already lined up, posing for the camera, when a boy in full Liverpool strip stops playing to be snapped underneath the image of the man he wants to be. When he grows up.

Chapter 3

The first signature