In a recent article (followed by a livestream), we witnessed the head coach of Egypt’s soccer team engage in grand irony: after losing to Argentina, Hossam Hassan complained that the game was rigged, and expressed dismay that there is international discrimination “even in soccer, even in sports?”
Meanwhile, as Coptic Solidarity has repeatedly reported (here, here, and here), and as Aid to the Church in Need noted in a February 2022 report,
Christians make up around 15 percent of the population of Egypt and are as football-crazy as their Muslim neighbours, but there is not a single Copt in the national team….There are no official statistics on the number of Copts in Egypt, but estimates vary between 10 percent and 20 percent. … The fact that no Copts, of any denomination, are represented in top-level football, and therefore in the national team, stings.
But it gets worse: the discrimination Egypt’s Christians face in soccer is the mere tip of an ugly iceberg of discrimination they face all throughout society.
The best way to demonstrate this is by comparing Coptic Christian experiences in Egypt with African American experiences in the United States. After all, Egypt’s Christians and America’s blacks have something in common: both groups account for roughly 15 percent of their nations’ populations.
And that is where their similarities end.
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