Sitting alone in a Chinese hotel room, a young Egyptian man, just shy of 20, held his head in his hands in a state of exhaustion. A light breeze came through the window as he looked at the shoe prints of the 15 young people who had just been there to throw him a modest party. The folkloric Chinese music coming from the hotel’s hallway did not make up for the temporary mess in the room.

Sitting alone in a Chinese hotel room, a young Egyptian man, just shy of 20, held his head in his hands in a state of exhaustion. A light breeze came through the window as he looked at the shoe prints of the 15 young people who had just been there to throw him a modest party. The folkloric Chinese music coming from the hotel’s hallway did not make up for the temporary mess in the room.

He examined the silver-carved shoe on his table. A Coca Cola sign on the shoe’s sole was carefully carved next to the name. It looked like the sculptor had become a bit tired while carving the letter e in the second name ‘Abouzeid’. The five Latin letters of the first name ‘Taher’ are easier to read.

The young man, from the central governorate of Asyut, couldn’t quite believe that the names engraved in the silver shoes were his very own.  He won the Silver Shoe as the second best scorer in the 1981 World Youth Cup, not yet realizing he was the best international product of Egyptian football since the 1964 Tokyo Olympic team.

He sat nearly two months in that Chinese hotel room with the national youth team after an exhausting World Cup, in which he had been obliged to play in the Friendly Great Wall Tournament.  His spirits, however, were low.  He was isolated from a troubled homeland, thousands of kilometers away and denied the Golden Shoe, even though he had scored as many goals as the Australian Mark Koussas because one of Taher’s four goals was the result of a penalty kick; the same kick that made Egypt beat Germany, later the title holder, and only a few hours before President Sadat had been assassinated.

A team mourns its president, October 1981

Taher, one of the best products of the Egyptian football since the 1967 Setback, must have had to live a completely absurd situation from that moment. Everyone had been talking about the historic tie between Egypt and an impressive Spanish rival:  A tie that was achieved by one of the best Egyptian goals in the 1980s. Taher, of course, scored this goal.  He, however, became exposed to all vulnerabilities after the assassination.

A psychological disorder of sorts hit the team and it lost to England in the quarter-finals.  Egypt started the game with two clean goals yet still lost after England scored four consecutive goals. No explanation was found for this ‘psychological disorder’. It was not clear whether it could be attributed to the consequences of the assassination or to the closed meeting held in another hotel room to discuss the financial injustice the team faced when it came down to the second round of qualification bonuses. Taher felt helpless in front of all that arbitrariness.  He knew that surviving England meant facing Qatar in the semi-finals. Winning the match against Qatar would have led to again facing Germany in the finals. Egypt was very close to winning the World Cup altogether.

In reality, Taher was the important Egyptian “product” in a field that had been suffocated for a long time by radical regionalism in the 1980s and later on, when Mubarak assumed power by radical Egyptian chauvinism and an imposed connection to Pan Arabism. Taher was, nevertheless, an exception to all of this. As a 1981 World Cup champion, he travelled through all Australian airports and competed with the Argentinians Burruchaga, Sergio Goycoechea and Gerardo Martino; the Brazilians Josimar and Julio Cesar; the Uruguayan legend Enzo Francescoli and the Italian Riccardo Ferri. On top of all of these famous players, Taher also played against the Germans Michael Zorc, later to become the Borussia Dortmund legend, and Roland Wohlfarth. Even though the match lasted for only 90 minutes, it was a rare 90 minutes during which the Egyptian “product” was the best.

Taher had always been an offspring of Al-Ahly Sporting Club (SC). He played in Al-Amal Team in Al-Ahly SC in the first half of the 1970s and was sponsored by Aljawhari, himself a product of Al-Ahly institution under its most prominent player Saleh Saleem, the 1986 African Cup of Nations’ cover boy. The 1986 African Cup victory itself was saved by Taher before it was transferred into yet another presidential achievement with pictures showing Mubarak handing over the cup to the national team.

Troublemaker 

Taher always felt that he was being robbed. He is not Al-Khatib or Farouq Gaafar, neither did he grow professionally in Europe. His legend was always stolen because of the many setbacks he suffered even though he did once take advantage of his position and appeared in a commercial in the mid-1980s. Taher enjoyed playing the maverick role even when he had to play the role of the loyal son of the ancient institution, whatever that was at the time. He publically rebelled against his spiritual father Mahmoud Aljawhari when the latter decided to exclude Taher from the 1990 World Cup team. Taher also clashed with Saleh Saleem only four months after Saleem resumed presidency of Al-Ahly SC.  Saleem had been trying to make Taher resign. On the other hand, Taher himself was a national hero for one day having directly contributed to the Ahly’s victory “in one of its darkest moments ever” of the 1992 Egypt Cup against Al-Zamalek SC.  Saleh Saleem’s popularity probably was at its lowest levels back then when he succeeded in making Taher quit.

Taher caused a series of clashes in the Egyptian football world. He challenged the eighties’ legacy of turning Egyptian football to primarily a source of income for opportunists. Taher bugged the makers of the most important human activity that dominated the lives of Egyptians over the thirty years of Mubarak’s rule.

He started to annoy the current Ahly board of directors and the overall Egyptian football system, which kept swinging between some retired general, a businessman who also excelled at the elections’ game, or some party-addicts gangsters with exclusive privileges. Even though Taher held no exact position, it was, in the last twenty years, in the habit of every football manager to alienate him from the scene.

An example of Taher, now in his early-fifties and still infuriated by the ‘status quo’, surfaced again when Taher clashed with an Al-Jazeera Sports anchor during a discussion of one of the matches. Taher criticized the pre-designed “fake discourse” while the anchor accused Taher of wanting to “spoil it for the audience.”

Taher has now become the new sport minister, in an exceptional situation in which an already famous national hero assumes a political position. He has tried to avoid the position for a long time despite always wanting it, even if for only six months, to initiate the confrontation he has been planning for decades. He personally believes that Egyptian football is one of those highly corrupted fields still dominated by Mubarak regime’s remnants.  A field that has a lot of potential yet has been kept stagnant by: fanatical supporters of a number of sporting clubs who are ready to be set on fire any minute, a group of board directors that may make the situation more inflammable and an expected clash with an extremely traditional and bureaucratic Egyptian Olympic committee. Taher has marketed himself as the original “Maverick”. He has always been that young man with mixed emotions sitting in that Chinese hotel and believing he could become the best in the world, even if only for a very short time. Right now, Taher rules the city- one that is fond of making and destroying its heroes in the blink of an eye.