During a meeting with Minister of Youth and Sports Khaled Abdul-Aziz on Aug. 20, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued instructions for conducting a study on the construction of a new stadium in the city of Port Said to provide distinguished sports services to the people of the province.
The president’s step seemed surprising, especially since Port Said is one of Egypt’s least-populated governorates (home to about 686,000 people) and already has one large stadium. Moreover, the construction of a new stadium in the city was not within the list of projects submitted by the sports minister at the Egypt Economic Development Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh in March 2015, which discussed the construction of stadiums in the governorates of Matrouh, the Red Sea, South Sinai and Luxor, among others.
