With the emergence of soccer star Mohamed “Mo” Salah as Egypt’s most famous export, the Egyptian government is wondering whether there might be a few more "Mo"s in the country waiting to be discovered. One of the government's first actions of 2020 was the Jan. 1 approval of a cooperation protocol between the Ministry of Youth and Sports and Starlab, a Netherlands-based sports development institute to implement a project aptly called “Stars of Egypt.”
“The project aims to discover football talents at home with the expertise of specialists from England and the Netherlands,” Minister of Youth and Sports Ashraf Sobhy said at the signing ceremony. The program calls for the establishment of 16 independent football academies to identify talented children between the ages of six and 16 and to train and nurture them.
“This would … supply the national teams with players to achieve victories in international and global football competitions,” Sobhy said.
Soccer players enjoy great popularity in Egypt, not only due to their skills on the soccer pitch, but also because of their lifestyles, including their distinctive sartorial choices, and contributions to social projects. In addition to Salah — star forward with Liverpool FC in the English Premier League — other household soccer names in Egypt include Mohamed Aboutrika, the former Al-Ahly player knows as “The Magician”, Ahmed Hassan, who currently plays for the Portuguese team S.C. Braga, and Taher Abouzeid, who later served as sports minister.
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