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.
