Home thoughts from abroad

FOOTBALL may well be the universal language but sometimes things can get lost in translation.

In Berlin during the World Cup this summer, I took a ride in a taxi driven by an Egyptian whose command of English was as threadbare as my fluency in Arabic or, for that matter, German.

Having established that football was our common ground (“World Cup, good?” “Yes, very good”), an awkward silence ensued, until I was suddenly struck by a shaft of inspiration and loudly exclaimed the name of his homeland’s most famous current export, Mido. The driver was delighted. “Mido, good,” he echoed giving me a big smile and a thumbs-up.

Now the ball was in his court, as he attempted to move the “conversation” on, one laboured word at a time. “Tutankhamun,” he suddenly exclaimed. Well, even with the man’s heavy accent I could recognise that famous name, although it did seem a tad over the top for my new friend to be comparing the Spurs striker to the celebrated boy king. No matter, I was happy to go along with him. “Yes, Tutankhamun, very good,” I replied, returning his smile and thumbs-up.

Truthfully, he seemed a bit taken aback at that but I assumed that he was simply impressed by my scholarly pronunciation. It was only after I got out of his car — having exchanged a final lively volley of ‘Midos’ and ‘Tutankhamuns’ — that it finally dawned on me that the driver hadn’t said ‘Tutankhamun’ at all. He’d said ‘Tottenham’.

The exchange came back to me last week as I found myself bedazzled by the fabulous riches of Tutankhamun himself in the great museum of antiquities in Cairo. (And, no, Spurs fans, they’re not to be confused with the glory of the cups of White Hart Lane).What was I doing in Egypt? Well, when a man has spent most of the year being paid to watch football in places like France, Germany, Cyprus, Portugal and England, not to mention Cork, Dublin and Derry, surely none but the most cynical would begrudge him a week off to take in the many splendours of the land of the Nile. Thanks, I knew you’d understand.

Not that I left the old footie behind. In our little neck of the woods, it’s easy to forget that there’s more to the grand old game than Shels or Man U or Celtic or even Barcelona. Take, for example, the Cairo derby between Egypt’s two biggest clubs, Zamalek and Al-Ahly. You may not have heard of it, but this is one of the most fiercely-contested rivalries in world football, a game which is played in a neutral venue in front of 75,000 demented fans. Indeed, such is the level of passionate support for both clubs right throughout Africa that, for 40 years now, the match officials for the games have had to be brought in, under heavy military security, from Europe or South America.

In 2001, referee Kenny Clark from Scotland — a veteran of four Old Firm games — got the call to Cairo, but only after six other European federations had refused to make a referee available. You could hardly blame them. Two years earlier, the game had to be abandoned when the Zamalek team walked off the pitch in protest at a red card handed out to one of their players by the French referee. The derby has been abandoned on three other occasions, mainly because of rioting, while any player who dares to do a “Mo Johnston” — as Hossam Hassan of the famous footballing brothers did, when he moved across town from Ahly to Zamalek in 2001 — is guaranteed a rain of bottles and general dog’s abuse for his troubles.

Our Egyptian guide Taso was a Zamalek man who couldn’t even bring himself to speak the name of Al-Ahly, insisting at all times on referring to them as “the others”. It happened to be a difficult week for Taso since, as African champions, Ahly were playing in the FIFA Club World Cup in Tokyo, looking to set up a glamour tie against the mighty Barcelona. It wasn’t to be. Having disposed of Auckland City from New Zealand 2-0 in the quarter-finals, Ahly went down 2-1 to Internacional of Brazil in the semis, but for the duration of their involvement, there wasn’t a spare seat to be had in the cafes of Egypt as fans roared on the team they call the “Red Devils”.

Our man Taso was much happier to take a few of us to see the other Red Devils in action, an open-air cafe in Aswan providing the exotic location in which we were able to take in Manchester United’s defeat of Benfica in the Champions’ League. Apart from the tiny TV, the apple-flavoured scent of water-pipes, the lack of booze, the stars overhead and the fact that the two women in our little group were breaching an otherwise exclusively male domain, why, it was just like watching the action down the boozer at home. (minus the women, obviously).

The other good thing about football as the world’s glue, is that it’s a boon to defining national identity. In a country where the majority of natives understandably assume that the visitor who speaks English actually hails from England, and where attempts to clarify from whence you actually come only serve to breed further confusion (“You are Holland?” or even, with an especially-arched eyebrow, “You are Iceland?”), football will invariably provide illumination.

Thus it was that the man in the bank in Cairo reacted with great delight when he set eyes on my passport. “Ah,” he smiled, “Italia 90! Zero-zero!”.

Clearly that numbing World Cup draw played far better in Egypt than it did in dear old Ireland. And we can take it, therefore, that at TV central in Cairo there was no Ahmed Al-Dunph hurling his hubbly-bubbly pipe across the screen in disgust.

The moral of the story? Next time you hear someone like little islander Arsene Wenger whinging about the demands of international football, it might be worth remembering that football helps the whole world go ‘round. And a big damn world it is.