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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hello, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My name is Danielle Kurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. So I guess I'm getting a little comfortable because I'm going to record another podcast episode that's not about something I'm an expert in, a little bit more personal maybe, but it's does have some political analysis and maybe it'll give you some insight into parts of the world and how they're thinking about recent events. I'm talking about the World cup and the travesty of the Egypt versus Argentina game that happened on July 7, 2026. I'm recording on July 7, and I'm very worked up about it. So let's see if I can make some useful comments here. Boiling and raging into the microphone. So I'm not gonna recap what happened at the game. Obviously, people have probably already heard, or if you know, you have a life outside the World cup right now, you can go look it up. But suffice to say, the rules were not applied evenly. There was this French ref who was basically ignoring fouls, who took away a goal for reasons that not just me, not just Dana, who doesn't know much about soccer, but also many others and many experts said were dubious reasons. At some point, the behavior of the ref became so egregious that the Egyptian coach, Hassam Hassan, put up his arms in an X, which is the sign for racism, basically calling out any kind of racist action on the field, and got yellow carded for doing that. I mean, I have no insider information here, I have no inside knowledge, but I can tell you as somebody who watched the game, that ref was egregious the way even that he interacted with the Egyptian team. And the Egyptian staff were honestly disgusting to witness. Because of all that interference, Egypt was eventually eliminated from the World cup today. And right after the game, there were Israeli flags in the stadium being flown in the faces of the coach and the players. And then there was beer being thrown at the players and at Egyptian fans by the Argentinians. And actually, just a few hours ago, the Egyptian team announced that it was putting in a complaint, a formal complaint against this ref with FIFA. Now, like I said, I'm recording on the day of, so I don't know what's going to happen with that complaint. FIFA obviously doesn't give a crap about racism and doesn't care about an Arab team being mistreated, but there it is. There was actually an official complaint against this Ref, it wasn't just bluster. Now, in terms of the Egyptian team itself, as one of the Arab teams that has gotten far, one of two from the region that have gotten far, Egypt and Morocco. I've only seen them really mentioned in English speaking media for two reasons. The first more than the second. The first reason are all the controversies around homophobia. Some of the players have refused to participate in like anti homophobia initiatives, for example, prior to this World Cup. And the most glaring example of the homophobia situation was when in Seattle where Egypt played Iran. Seattle designated that match as the Pride match because it just so happened to fall on Pride Weekend. And both the Egyptian and the Iranian teams formally objected to FIFA because in particular for Egypt and similarly in Iran, but because I'm talking about Egypt here, homosexuality is criminalized in Egypt. And the Egyptian Football association basically said that these activities contradict their culture and religion and their values and they didn't want to be associated with this pride match thing. Now, FIFA denied their request to ban rainbow flags, for example, but they prohibited any kind of like pride activities within the stadium venue. So that angle has been in the media a lot and some of the comments from the coach and a few of the players has been in the media a lot around this issue. The second reason I've seen in the media any kind of focus on the Egyptian team, and much less so than the first reason, as I said, has been the fact that this coach is very pro Sisi, who is the president of Egypt, the dictator of Egypt currently, and who overturned democracy basically in a coup. And we don't have all the time here to recount how he came to power. But suffice to say, not a great guy. But this coach has been kind of effusive in how much he is pro Cee, constantly thanking him, constantly thanking the authorities of Egypt and being very kind of, like I said, effusive about how much he loves the dictatorship. And I will say it's actually funny how he himself is like quite an authoritarian character. So like in Egypt, he is constantly threatening pundits and commentators and saying like, you know, we all have to rally around the team and like, you shouldn't criticize. And just like we rally around our political leadership, you rally around us. And he's also very litigious, like he's threatened to sue pundits who have criticized his coaching. So he himself is, like I said, quite the character. And for a variety of reasons, people can find him distasteful. The Guardian also put out this really interesting report about why the coach is the way he is and how the Egyptian team and the Egyptian Football association has become increasingly tied up with the dictatorship. I will link it in the show notes. All of the details are extremely fascinating and disturbing, but I'll read some of it here because basically the Guardian report says Hossam Hassan, the coach, his actions align with the reality of who now owns Egyptian football. Essentially all of it is now linked to the military and intelligence services in that country. And there's all these examples of how. One that really stood out to me was the fact that Egyptian fans, if they want a ticket to a game or if they want to go to like a watch zone or something like that, there's only one app, and that app requires a biometric fan ID for every person getting a ticket. And it's owned by the media conglomerate that's itself owned by Egypt's General Intelligence Service. So it's, you know, not coincidental that this, like, authoritarian character who is very effusive of the dictator, is who gets elevated as the coach of the team. That said, with all of these issues, you know, there are so many things that people can find distasteful, can find inappropriate, can find outrageous about any of these teams, any of these players. But there is something, to me that reeks of racism when fans especially celebrate these teams. When someone like me is celebrating the Egyptian team or the Moroccan team or these teams that come from my region, they represent me at the World Cup. I have people who, especially on social media, get up in my mentions, basically acting snide, like, why would you support this team? Why would you support the Egyptian team when there are these issues with it? Or why don't these players speak out about their government? About Gaza? That one is, particularly, for me, gross that people bring up. They kind of use Gaza as a cudgel to say, oh, you know, you shouldn't be celebrating these teams, and how dare you. And all the kind of snide remarks that I've been getting especially. And then every. Every fan of these teams has been getting. But it's a really ridiculous thing to say to the fans of these teams or even to most of the players that aren't, like, outwardly outspoken with bad views. Most of them are not talking about anything. They're players who play for a team that comes from a very authoritarian context. They cannot speak out against their government. They can't criticize government policy. And it's outrageous that only teams from the global south, you know, black and brown players, are the ones who are tasked with holding their governments accountable. But nobody ever talks to the American team. Nobody ever says to Pulisic, hey, why does your government support genocide in Gaza? Nobody makes him answer for anything, even though ostensibly we are a democracy and we have much more responsibility for what our government does than what Egyptians in a very authoritarian Egypt have any kind of responsibility towards their government. So I'm sure you can hear it in my voice. I'm a little ticked off about how we're told we can't even support our teams who are composed not of policymakers, but composed of football players, soccer players, and we're told we can't do that because how dare they not answer for every ill in their society. And it's again, particularly outrageous to use Gaza as the reason you might criticize support for the Egyptian team or any other regional team when Gazans themselves are cheering on Egypt. In fact, today at the beginning of the match, Muhammad Al Wahdi, who is a member of the Egyptian Relief committee in Gaza, which is a group that also organized screenings of the FIFA matches in Gaza, was killed by Israel. Now, of course, all the racists who are calling out these individual teams and individual members of these teams for not being more outspoken are not going to say anything about Mohammed Al Wahdi. And of course FIFA will not say anything about Mohamed Al Wahdi, but we're not allowed, of course, to support our teams. And this is the larger context, I will say, for why particularly I can speak for Arab fans. We are so outraged about what happened today at the game because it's more than just the game. And the way that Arab media is discussing what's happened, there is really a sense of outrage and people are screaming. This sounds like a conspiracy because the Egyptian team and the coach in particular have been so outspoken about Palestine. A few days ago at the press conference, the Egyptian coach basically talked on and on about Palestine and asked FIFA, you know, as a coach and as somebody who's bringing a team to compete at their tournament, to use its quote, unquote, soft power to alleviate suffering for Palestinians, to let Palestinians, quote, unquote, live. And he said, if there is anyone in the world who does not feel for the Palestinian people, then they are not human, whether they are Arab, European or American. And he talked on and on about this, and I think I understand. I mean, I know that FIFA can't do anything about the larger conflict, but FIFA created a whole fake award to curry favor with Trump. So basically the coach was saying, hey, do something to alleviate suffering in Palestine. Then they also dedicated their last victory to the Palestinian people and have been really using that kind of rhetoric. And it's not just rhetoric, truly. Egyptian public opinion has been very clear on what it thinks of Palestine and what it thinks of Israel's behavior in Palestine. So in that context, when there's this team who is being more outspoken about this thing that matters to them and matters to the region, and then FIFA, I mean, not just against Egypt, but in a variety of ways, acts in a corrupt manner and really puts their thumb on the scale, tips the scale for bigger teams, at one point reversing a red card that an American player got. And in this scenario with the game, Egypt versus Argentina, really, it seems like they were intent on giving Argentina the victory. Now, again, I don't want to sound conspiratorial, I'm not saying I have inside knowledge, but I'm telling you how it looks and how people are discussing it in kind of the Arab and Arabic language spheres, which is that this team is being punished. And it's worse. And it adds insult to injury when there are fans on the Argentina side waving Israeli flags as the team leaves the stadium, or the Israelis in Tel Aviv are celebrating the fact that Argentina beat Egypt. I mean, that is the context through which Arab fans and Arab teams are understanding what happened today. And then this is of course tied to the fact that FIFA is extremely problematic organization to say the least. And on the question of Israel, Palestine has been, I think, for decades faced with requests and campaigns to suspend Israel from FIFA, the Israel Football association, for the various crimes, the targeting of athletes, et cetera, and has refused all of that. And this has come up again in this World cup with activists unfurling banners and things like this saying, kick Israel out of FIFA. Now the situation has gotten so bad that there are all these calls to free football from FIFA essentially, and there's going to be a class action lawsuit against corruption in FIFA. There's going to be a complaint to the FIFA ethics committee. I learned about this on reboot FIFA.com, originally posted on Musa Akwanga's Bluesky account. But basically they're calling for the head of FIFA, Infantino, to be investigated immediately. This was already in progress prior to all of these egregious actions during this World cup, whether it's the removal of the red card or all of these ridiculous refs. So the complaint cites the fact that Infantino awarded this so called peace prize to Trump, which was, they claim, a clear breach of FIFA's duty of neutrality. So I'm Reading off of the website here. And then on top of that, all of the things that have transpired since about how FIFA functions, all of that is being used as evidence to the ethics committee. And basically they're saying even if the ethics committee doesn't do anything about the complaint, this will give them ammunition to go after FIFA at the political level.
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And.
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And apparently they're being supported to some degree by the Norwegian Football Association. All the more reason to support Norway and our favorite friendly giant, Haaland, in this World Cup. Anyway, I've digressed my point for recording this is as therapy to process what has transpired today and the disappointment that we felt. And just like the coach, the Egyptian coach said in the press conference after the game, there really is no point in gathering people to come compete if you're not going to do it fairly. And he says he's not going to watch any more football games. I don't know if I can commit to that. Morocco's still in the tournament, but we really should do something about this absolutely ridiculous and corrupt organization that is destroying this beautiful sport and this moment for connection that the World cup presents. I mean, I've already done an episode about all of the different ways that people have really used this World cup to make connections with others and all these heartwarming moments that have occurred around Palestine and around a lot of other things. But the blatant bias and cheating that has occurred in some of these games really poisons our experience of this World cup and our opportunity to cheer for the teams that represent us. So that's all I have for today. I'm gonna take a few weeks, few months, few years to get over the fact that Egypt was unfairly eliminated. I hope the Moroccans beat the French. I'll put that out there. I don't care what anyone says, but given what's happened, I don't know that anything will be fair at this, at this World Cup. But we move on. Thank you all for listening to this rant and I'll see you next time. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.
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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.