“Over there, I’m going the same way,” whispers a lady dressed in a burka carrying an enormous steel bowl on the top of her head that is filled with clothes waiting to be washed.
In pointing towards a dusty road just about wide enough to accommodate small vehicles, revealing hands decorated in henna tattoos that lead up her arm, she continues to speak quietly and in a regional dialect which sounds mysterious, like rhyme. There is surprise when I tell her I’m attempting to reach Cairo by microbus. “It’s a long way,” she warns. “Not many people think about this.” After a pause, she corrects herself. “Unless you are Mohamed Salah, of course.”
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Everybody in Nagrig, the town in the Nile Delta I am attempting to leave, knows about what Salah did as a child. Across Egypt, the story has become legendary and layers of excess have been added as years have passed. Later in Cairo, one well-connected journalist would tell me of the “five or six” microbuses Salah had to catch just to make it to training 90-odd miles away. “15 hours of travel in the same day,” he beamed, as if he’d sacrificed his own time.
In Nagrig, it must be tempting for those people in a position to take advantage of Salah’s fame to deal in the same level of intemperance. The further the legend grows, the greater the opportunity for Nagrig to become a central part of the story because that was where the most iconic currently-active footballer from Africa was born.
The mayor of the town, however, believes it is important that facts are right because he has seen how things get out of hand. It was impossible for Salah to enjoy himself or even take some prayers last summer when he returned to Nagrig because of the crowds that came from other places across the north of Egypt just to see him.
It is ultimately Salah’s generosity that helps Nagrig the most, and there, the struggle remains real. “Three microbuses sometimes, usually four,” Maher Shetia confirms, easing back into the couch at his modestly-decorated apartment close to the school where Salah once studied. “And maybe three or four hours there but as many as five hours back.”
The lack of consistency over timing is explained by the very purpose of Egypt’s microbuses, which serve impoverished communities that are not connected to the major cities by established transport links. They are a cheaper — albeit less predictable — alternative. Some buses carry as few as three passengers, others can hold seven but they never leave their point of departure unless they are full.
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For Salah, if his bus got stuck in the madness of Cairo’s traffic on his way home, he would often miss his connection at the next stop and this would result in a long wait on a roadside in the dark.
Inconveniently, training sessions at El Mokawloon in Nasr, towards the south east of the most populated city in the continent, usually finished just as the sun went down. What followed was Cairo’s rush hour.
Imagine a canister of luncheon meat attached to a set of wheels and then you have something like a microbus. They are not serviced by recognised stops, either. There are no signs and no timetables, just forks in the road and congregations of drivers who huddle around, usually smoking tobacco, until someone interrupts them.
A driver might not be planning to go all the way to Cairo without stopping but he will not say no if you ask. If you are the first, you’ll have to wait for as many as six other people who want to travel the same way before you finally depart.
Salah would start his journey to Nasr at a T-junction on the edge of Nagrig, heading first to the slightly bigger town of Basyoun where Aston Villa’s Ahmed Elmohamady was born. From there, he’d go to the noisy city of Tanta, where there were more options to reach Cairo amid the mayhem of Ramses Square, before finding the last microbus that would crawl through the logjams and eventually take him closer to the training ground.
This was his life for a year when he was 12. A minimum of three times a week, there and back in a day. Sometimes he would return home past midnight then set off again the next morning. Sometimes he would do it as many as five times a week, depending on games. Sometimes his father would accompany him, sometimes his mother. He’d usually have some form of guidance. But not always.
Sessions in Cairo would begin at 4.30pm. This would mean leaving Nagrig just before midday. Even in mid-winter, it starts to get warm around this time. Though the temperature is too much for a donkey which hides in the shade beneath an old wooden cart, most Egyptians in the countryside are wearing heavy coats when The Athletic attempts to recreate the journey Salah was regularly making before he became a superstar.
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This reflects just how hot it can get in the summer. “Higher than 50 degrees last August,” says the woman in the burka as she climbs past the driver of the microbus taking us to Basyoun, who stubs a cigarette into the red earth and looks at the road ahead, which is notorious and proves to be horrendous. The mayor of Nagrig had warned me by sending a WhatsApp message in Arabic which translated roughly into: “Hold on to something, otherwise you will bang your head.”
There are three boys on the microbus who are a bit older than Salah was when he made this trip. It’s a Wednesday and they have finished school early. They are intrigued by the European interlopers sharing the same space as them.
This prompts short stares and giggles more or less until we reach Kafr al-Manshi. On a European road in a more recognisable vehicle, it would take five minutes to get there. This passage takes nearly half an hour. There is not really a road but a succession of depressions, gaping wounds and deeper pits with occasional cracked tarmac around it. I wonder about the durability of the chassis on the microbus which surprisingly, considering the dirt it is covered in, is decorated on the inside with yellow fur as well as teddy bears and rubber ducks dangling down from the roof.
The driver is convinced that we might be able to bypass Tanta altogether at Basyoun; there are more direct connections with Cairo than there were 15 years ago. In the pursuit of recreating the same journey as Salah, I decide it is better to go through Tanta.
For 15 minutes, I wait for the bus to fill up while the Koran plays on the radio and the doors remain open, letting the flies in. A cafe selling liquidised sugar cane helps bring patience and invigorates jaded limbs. Microbuses are not built for people with long legs. One of mine is going numb already. I’ve been travelling for less than an hour.
Cairo gets up your nose and under the nails on your fingers. You can smell it on your hair and pick it from your ears. Arrivals are memorable, even if they are at 3am and entering through the airport rather than madness of transport terminals at Ramses Square.
In the obscurity of these murky hours, there are street markets and hawkers using drills to remove bumpers from roadsides, presumably to sell them as scrap. When the roads are quieter, you realise lane discipline does not exist.
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Motorists zoom into any space there is and later you accept this approach is probably a consequence of the phenomenal congestion, which probably only eases because of the willingness to find solutions no matter how daring they are.
Car brakes, meanwhile, appear to be attached to car horns. Boots swing open without warning because locks are damaged. As they slow towards traffic lights, taxi drivers exchange cigarette lighters even though their engines are still running and tyres still moving. As soon as you get out of one taxi, another one appears trying to convince you back in.
Among the expatriate community in calmer suburbs like Maadi, there is a joke about the Egyptian embassy. If you ask a man on the street where to find it, he will offer convincing directions all the way there — even though, of course, there is no Egyptian embassy in Cairo, the city where it feels like nearly everyone leads with the authority of a tour guide and the service you never knew you needed is just a few feet away.
Required or not, assistance is always close if it looks like you have a few quid to spare. It is not the same if you do not. You can only imagine how daunting it must have felt for Salah as a country boy, arriving in Cairo for the first time when he was 12 in pursuit of a football career.
“I don’t think he’d been here before joining El Mokawloon,” says the supremo of the club’s junior section, who brought Salah and his parents to his apartment after a year of commuting and explained that he was so excited by the intake of players born in 1992 and 1993 that he’d persuaded his superiors to buy accommodation close to the training ground so those who came from afar could stay and focus more on their football development.
His name is Refaat Ragab but he is commonly known by his nickname, Reeo. To Salah, he was Captain Reeo — the legendary Egyptian footballer who helped modernise El Mokawloon’s youth system by visiting Europe and returning with fresh ideas.
He is sitting on a beautifully-embroidered chair at his home of 50 years in Almazah, another one of Cairo’s slightly more relaxed districts, as he sifts through a pile of black and white photographs which reflect the trajectory of his own playing career before arriving at a file of memorabilia relating to Salah.
“Here we go,” he says. “There are many people in Egypt who claim they saw something in Salah before I did but I have it all documented…”
It became clear Salah was in good hands at El Mokawloon under the guidance of Reeo, who had six hugely successful seasons as a winger at Cairo’s mighty Al Ahly club before spending the same amount of time at the less-established Ismaily, where he helped deliver not only the first league title in the club’s history but Africa’s version of the Champions League — something no Egyptian side had ever achieved before.
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Beating Congo’s TP Mazembe over two legs in 1969 was “the best day of my life” but running that experience close was the time eight years earlier when he appeared for Al Ahly against the brilliant Tottenham Hotspur team of the early 1960s, one that included Jimmy Greaves and Dave Mackay.
Though Spurs ended up winning that match 7-3, Reeo explains the result by a raft of changes in the second half and he still rues that the contest was not treated as seriously as it should have been. “Our chance to show the Europeans,” he reflects, though some amends were made a few years later when Benfica and Eusebio visited Cairo and were beaten 3-2.
Reeo is 78 and in the early months of retirement having left El Mokawloon in the summer of 2019 following three decades in the youth department. He had been the vice-president of a scheme sponsored by Pepsi before that, which opened doors to as many as 55,000 young Egyptian footballers.
Salah was one of those names who appeared on the final list of 40 players, though it helped Salah was already connected to Othmason Tanta, a now disbanded club which like El Mokawloon was owned by Arab Contractors, the biggest construction company in Egypt. The firm’s fingerprints are across many of the country’s most significant building projects, including the Aswan Dam, several international airports and the Cairo to Alexandria desert road, which cut Salah’s travel time between Tanta and the capital.
“Mohamed was the cream of the cream,” Reeo says, breaking into English, a language he has picked up on his travels. He reverts to Arabic to convey what he thought of Salah when he first saw him play. This was in Tanta towards the end of 2005.
“His acceleration,” he says. “I cannot describe how fast he was — faster even than he is now, though his game has refined. Sometimes when a player is so outstanding in one area, it is more difficult to see where he falls short and of course, any 12-year-old needs to improve in all areas. But it was also clear that his left foot was so strong. He could kick the ball with power. I made a call to Arab Contractors and said, ‘We have to focus on him’.”
Reeo modified Salah’s contract and increased his salary after a few months at El Mokawloon, then at the end of the first season, it was made possible for him to stay at club lodgings, where he received education, food and medical assistance.
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“I could see that the travel wasn’t helping him,” Reeo says. “He was very tired every day. But I also think travelling helped him understand very quickly that achieving dreams involves a lot of hard work. You may have talent but talent is only one part of a person’s journey. It wasn’t easy for him and this made him more motivated. You see this a lot with players from the countryside. They are hungrier than players that come from Cairo.”
Reeo remembers another important decision, one that ensured El Mokawloon were able to keep more players from Salah’s age group than they would have normally been able to. The squad was too big but it was also very talented and so he decided to run two teams — one of them competing in the Cairo league and another in Giza. At the end of every season, each player would receive a pamphlet of information to give to their parents. Salah’s arrival in 2006 was mentioned almost as an afterthought.
“The player Mohamed Salah has joined the team,” were Reeo’s notes. Two seasons later, Salah’s under-14s team won the Cairo championship unbeaten, winning 16 of their 18 league games and drawing twice. This involved scoring 63 goals and conceding just 12. “Living in Cairo, Mohamed’s concentration levels were able to increase,” Reeo says. “We saw a leap. He went from being promising to very, very promising.”
It has been reported that Salah played as a left-back for El Mokawloon’s first team but that is not true. He had arrived in the youth system as a left wing-back but changed positions because there were already other left-sided players.
One of them was Sherif Alaa, whose progression was marked in 2015 when he was signed by Zamalek. Another was Ali Fathi, who, like Salah, was fascinated by Europe and that led to him joining Nacional of Madeira in the same year Salah moved to Basel.
He would return to Egypt with El Mokawloon before going to Zamalek, where he suffered an injury that nearly finished his career. On a Thursday afternoon, he was undertaking fitness sessions at the training ground of El Entag El Harby while his team-mates won a league fixture across town at another Cairo club, El Gaish.
“We know a lot about each other,” Fathi says of his relationship with Salah, having shared a room with him for nearly five years as they emerged through El Mokawloon’s youth system. The pair relished challenging each other and would determine who bought dinner by the number of right-footed goals scored in five-a-side training matches.
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Competition extended to those evenings spent together playing FIFA on the PlayStation, which was bought with a chunk of both players’ earliest wages. “I would go Real Madrid and Mo would be Barcelona,” Fathi recalls smiling. The allegiances extended to El Clasico, when Salah would back Barcelona to win. “I would end up buying dinner because this was Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona…”
Mohamed Elneny would later move to the Premier League with Arsenal and he’d spent most of his formative life in the youth teams at Al Ahly. On joining El Mokawloon in 2008, he was given a room next to Salah and Fathi’s. Salah had lots in common with Elneny because he came from El Mahalla El Kubra, a spinning and weaving town not too far away from Nagrig.
“I could go home if I wanted to but it wasn’t so easy for them,” recalls Fathi, who was born in Helwan, a satellite settlement on the banks of the Nile to the south of Cairo. “It meant they became very close.”
Elneny, says Fathi, was even more competitive than Salah and he did not take defeat in any form particularly well, even if it was on the PlayStation. “Mo would drive him crazy and remind him of how much better he was. When you get to know Mo, he’s very funny and he likes to get a reaction from people. But during training and matches, he was very, very focused — nothing was stopping him.”
Back at Captain Reeo’s apartment in Almazah, the former youth chief reflects on Salah’s status in the game and wonders about his own influence, examining the extent to which the player’s ability and determination took him to the heights he has now reached, and whether the environment he created had a bearing.
Had Salah been signed by Al Ahly or Zamalek, Reeo concluded, his career path could have been different because of the demand for results at an early age. “There is too much expectation on the coaches to win trophies,” he says.
This is because of each Egyptian club’s obsession with records, which does not end at first-team level. For example, at the youth academy of Al Ahly, each season is detailed in the wooden boards of achievement.
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“Players need to learn how to play football before they learn how to win,” Reeo says. “Too many players reach 16 thinking they know how to win, but their talent has not improved and their weaknesses are still exposed. This is what happens when coaches are told, ‘If you don’t win the championship, we will fire you.’ The desire to win interrupts natural progression.”
Yet Salah did win at El Mokawloon and he also progressed. According to Fathi, it was Salah’s independence that made him different. He was able to look around and think for himself. After training sessions, he’d go to the exercise hall every day and spend at least half an hour lifting light weights. Then he enrolled at a private gym, telling his instructor he needed to improve on his stamina and acceleration even though he was already fast.
“The diet of Egyptian footballers isn’t always that good,” Fathi admits. “But Mo took conditioning very seriously, more seriously than any other Egyptian player I’ve met. He wasn’t told to do this by the coaches. He recognised this was the way for European players. To become a success in Europe, he had to do the same.”
It is the fourth call to prayer of the day and this means a pause on the seven-a-side pitches beneath the lights of Al Ahly’s training ground in their former stadium El Titch, which sits incongruously on the island that gave birth to their great rivals, Zamalek.
Ahmed Hassan has played for both teams late in a career which amounted to 186 caps for his country — a world record. In the heat, he is barely sweating as he waits for the game to start again by casually sitting on the ball.
Aged 44, his delayed arrival (explained by the traffic, of course), has changed the dynamic of an event that happens every Thursday night before sundown. Al Ahly’s legends, indeed, were losing to associated celebrities and other hangers-on until Hassan showed up with his bow-legs, his slight limp, his relative youth and his determination to put things right.
One of the older former Al Ahly players is Mohamed Amer, who at 66, still has the appetite to run around in games such as this one four times a week. Bearded, wearing a checked shirt and smelling wonderfully of deep fragrances, he later explains why, as El Mokawloon’s manager, he decided to give Mohamed Salah his professional debut.
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“I liked his adventure,” Amer says. “He had speed but lots of players have speed. Do they know how to use it? When you have a young player, you have to know exactly the right time to push him into the first team. You have to be confident that he has a chance of being good in a particular game. I decided to use Salah as a substitute when the other team was not doing well.
“When defenders are tired they do not want to try and stop pace. Spaces also open up because concentration levels drop. For seven or eight games, this was the way. He always did something that impressed me.”
Amer has the dubious record of being the only player to score for and against Al Ahly in the same game. This came against Zamalek and for weeks after, the fans did not seem to know whether to boo or cheer him after the big derby ended in a draw. In the 1970s and 1980s, Amer won eight league titles with Al Ahly, as well as seven Egyptian Cups. When his playing career ended, he was on the coaching team that went to Italy in 1990 when the country featured in the World Cup finals.
Amer says he could identify with Salah because he trained like an Al Ahly player even though he wasn’t one. “The appetite of a winner,” he says. “But the most important thing was, I knew I could trust him. He always did what I asked him to do and you don’t always get that level of attention with young players. His memory was very good.”
Salah made an impact in one of his earliest games — a tricky fixture at Haras El Hodood, a team from Alexandria who were competing for the title — helping to secure a draw. When he starred against Zamalek a few weeks later, Amer made a bold prediction, telling journalists, “Two years from now, he will be like Messi in Egypt.”
Then the revolution happened. “And you could see it right there,” says a man drinking mint tea, recalling the morning in February 2011 when he and the other regulars in the Wadi el Meligy cafe saw the crowds gathering in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and suddenly, they had ringside seats for what promised to be the most profound and progressive moment in modern Egyptian history.
Only, it hasn’t turned out that way. President Mubarak’s autocracy was initially replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood in the first democratic election in decades. In 2013, the Brotherhood was quashed by President Sisi and Egypt has since returned to being a one-party state.
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When another man with expressive eyes quietly strikes up conversation in a different cafe and asks himself whether the country is in a better position eight years after the revolution as he casually puffs on a shisha pipe, it feels like he is revealing something rather than posing a question.
During my stay in the country, it becomes clear that all conversations about politics require discretion because you never know who is listening. For journalists, it is now an ordeal to get in. On my last day before flying home, there is an unsettling development relating to the arrests made by Sisi’s men after unfavourable comments by two writers on their social media pages.
Football might be the national sport but you have to be careful how you express yourself about that as well. For six years, supporters were pretty much banned from stadiums after 74 Al Ahly fans died following attacks in Port Said at the end of a cup game against Al Masry. It is claimed the attacks were orchestrated by the military, who wanted to take revenge for the role of Al Ahly’s ultras in the revolution 12 months earlier. “And many of those military leaders are in power now,” I am reminded.
Though fans were allowed to enter stadiums again for league fixtures in 2018, capacities remain limited and attendances are much lower than they normally would be. Sisi is obsessed by the threat of public gatherings and this explains why Tahrir Square — the centre of the revolution — seems to be permanently under construction.
It feels like you are on safer ground with Mohamed Salah, the national hero who nevertheless has tried to keep politics at a safe distance from himself. He is a rare breed in Egypt because he never played for Al Ahly or Zamalek, and this broadens his appeal.
In the Wadi el Meligy cafe, there are discussions about whether he should be the national team’s captain instead of Ahmed Fathy, a 35-year-old who had two spells in England with Sheffield United and Hull City, but, more significantly, who has been the cornerstone of Al Ahly’s defence over so many years.
Usually, in Egypt, a manager only changes his captain when the player decides to retire but Hossam El Badry wanted to replace Fathy with Salah even though his existing skipper wanted to carry on. It is also custom for the captaincy to be awarded to the team’s eldest player and by that logic, Mohamed Elneny and Ahmed Hegazi would be ahead of Salah. In the end, Fathy — despite being Salah’s friend — simply refused to step down and this has led to speculation about disharmony in the dressing room.
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The mood was not helped when it was revealed that an administrative error made by the Egyptian FA on forms for the FIFA World Player of the Year award led to Salah missing out on votes. Meanwhile, it was rumoured Salah had stopped giving out his mobile phone number to new younger team-mates with the national team. “Does he remain who he was before?” asks one journalist during my stay in Cairo, only to be corrected by another one who suggests too many people in the country — including some footballers — have taken advantage of his better nature and this has led to him protecting himself.
Ali Fathi says Salah’s circle is small and he is loyal to the friends he has known the longest. This is reflected by what he did for Mahmoud Genesh, Zamalek’s goalkeeper, when the 32-year-old suffered a serious knee injury. Salah arranged for Genesh to visit the medical team at Liverpool’s training ground, Melwood, and this helped him back to fitness quicker than anyone in Egypt expected.
According to Fathi, Mohammed Samara was the star of El Mokawloon’s first team in the season Salah made his debut. Now 36 and coach of Al Ahly’s under-17s, Samara was born in Cairo but chose to represent Palestine because of his parents’ ancestry.
At the club’s youth academy in the Nasr district, he fondly remembers a 4-0 victory over El Dakhleya even though he wasn’t playing. Salah scored the first hat-trick of his career that day and after each goal, he ran towards Samara wherever he happened to be. “The first goal; I was on the bench and the second, I was warming up. He looked for me when the third went in as well but all of the other players tried to block his path. It was a funny moment,” he says.
Salah was unafraid to associate himself with older team-mates and learn from them. He was also grateful for their guidance. The morning Samara turned 29, he found a gift waiting for him in the dressing room. Though he hadn’t mentioned his birthday to anyone else, Salah remembered despite being one of El Mokawloon’s newest first-team players. “It was a Fossil watch and Chanel aftershave. ‘Who left this?’ I asked. The kitman told me it was from Salah. This was very kind. I have used all of the aftershave, of course. But I still have the watch,” he says.
The 2010-11 season was his first full campaign as a regular starter. “He improved dramatically,” says El Mokawloon’s former coach, Mohamed Amer. “He didn’t lack confidence but he became even more confident. His decision-making became better, which can often be a problem with fast players because they think they can beat everyone with speed. Tactically, there were great improvements. He understood better where defenders would position themselves.”
Amer believes it says a lot about Salah’s focus that both his first full season as well as his second were interrupted by events beyond his control. Following the revolution in 2011, there was a long break between games, while the Port Said stadium disaster a year later led to a suspension of the league altogether. Amer had left El Mokawloon by then and the suspension meant they were spared the ignominy of relegation.
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Within four months, Salah was off to Switzerland to sign for Basel. He had earlier been offered to Zamalek only for the club’s president to intervene, suggesting he was not good enough. Though one of his first professional goals had come against Al Ahly in a draw, they never made a move for him either.
There are theories in Egypt about why he went elsewhere. These were unpredictable times, even for the country’s biggest football clubs. An uncertain political outlook following the revolution meant Zamalek and Al Ahly were more conservative with their financial investments. The blanket ban on supporters entering stadiums after Port Said then left both clubs with less money because their gate revenues were wiped away. Before, both clubs had been able to outmuscle European rivals because of their economic reach but not now.
Both Samara and Fathi think Salah would have gone abroad regardless of domestic interest because that was always his dream. Despite any Egyptian player’s intentions, though, it is very difficult to resist Al Ahly or Zamalek when they come for you because of all the promises they make and the pressure a player finds himself under.
His performances at the Under-20 World Cup in Colombia following the revolution also improved his possibilities. It says much about the faith in youth at El Mokawloon that the club had as many players representing Egypt as Al Ahly in that tournament and two more than Zamalek. When the shirt numbers were announced, it was Ali Fathi rather than Salah given the number 11. Though Salah took 12, he was earmarked by a Basel scout based in Buenos Aires as one of the top five players in the competition. Salah had confided in Fathi before the opening group game — a 1-1 draw with Brazil — that he saw this opportunity as his “route into Europe”.
Amer realises Salah could have slipped away from El Mokawloon on the cheap in the months after returning from South America. There were agents promising him moves to Germany but Amer persuaded Salah to sign a new contract. “He displayed his loyalty despite big promises and the temptations he may have had,” Amer says. “I think that is why God has been very good to him ever since.”
Pandemonium. Cars’ brakes screeching, horns blaring. Humanity surging in all directions. Security everywhere — the police with their stern faces and giant batons; army men with their machine guns. Tiny stray cats scuttling up beside you, wisps of feline fur making human skin feel uneasy. Hawkers with all the answers, casually appearing.
This is Ramses Square, more famous for its train station — the biggest in Egypt. There are platforms offering quick routes to cities like Alexandria, Aswan and Luxor. Outside there are microbuses, which can take you pretty much anywhere and are much cheaper — though you know the journeys take a lot longer.
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Back towards Tanta we go. When the engines start, the bus shoots off like it has been freed from a slingshot. I realise what I like most about the mood on this mode of transport is the laziness of it all. Passengers doze off quickly, ignoring any discomfort. Goodwill also exists. It is custom for the oldest person on the bus to collect the driver’s payment and then hand the money over at the end of the trip. The pleasure of travelling from Cairo to Tanta is 15 Egyptian pounds — around 70p. “Prices have gone up,” mutters one passenger ruefully but he doesn’t explain why.
Since Sisi took control, the cost of living in Egypt has increased. Meanwhile, just over half of the country’s population still live in rural areas. Though this has created some of the most densely-inhabited agricultural land in the world, just a third of Egyptians make a living off the land and returns are small. Agriculture accounts for less than 14 per cent of Egypt’s GDP — which explains why so many live below the poverty line. Back in 2005-06, it would have cost Salah’s parents less than £1 to send him to Cairo and back in a day. A portion of that travel was funded by El Mokawloon at Captain Reeo’s suggestion. The belts on families living outside the urban areas are tightening. I wonder whether all of this might stop the next Salah from following his dream.
A microbus needs an official permit but there are unofficial options and in Tanta I take one. This means creeping away from the main microbus stop underneath a flyover, which is marked by mural of Salah, and down a shadowy side street. The avenue reflects real life in a small city like Tanta, where informal housing in the form of enormous breeze-block apartment buildings are troubled by overcrowding, grime, cracked masonry and dysfunctional plumbing.
The presence of the desert highway means Cairo to Tanta is the easy part, even though it takes up more than half of the journey. There is more to see between Tanta, Basyoun and Nagrig but this is where the roads become more awkward and microbuses aren’t always waiting to take you onto the next stop.
The plains may seem arid and monotonous but look close enough and you see small details like lush farming plots filled with date palms and sunflowers swaying in the breeze. Occasionally, there are buffalos lounging in the shade. Small towns and villages, however, tend to take on the same form. Qaranshu, which is close to Basyoun, is a place of numerous open-air abattoirs with murderous meat hooks and massive slabs of indeterminate animal.
“Most of the villages in Egypt look the same,” a contact in Cairo explains. “There is dank poverty. Generations of uneducated; life revolves around the mosque and hope springs from faith.”
Compared with Cairo, the first thing you notice in Nagrig is the fresh air. It has a population of 15,000 and its mayor is a sociable fellow. He is waiting on the side of the road accompanied by a small team of helpers when I arrive and we walk together straight to the school where Salah once studied and has since financed its redevelopment.
Nagrig exports jasmine to France and Russia, as well as onions to other parts of the Middle East. Yet it does not have a post office. Each month, Salah donates around £3,000 towards Nagrig’s upkeep and it goes a long way. Since joining Liverpool, this has helped draw up plans for new medical and ambulance facilities plus an Islamic religious centre which alone cost more than £1 million. While a non-profit charity provides help for families in need of support, an erratic water supply saw a grass football pitch die and in 2020 Nagrig will be installed with a surface of astroturf.
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Maher Shetia became mayor 16 years ago. He was a footballer himself and played as a centre forward for the town’s team beside one of Salah’s uncles who still lives in Nagrig along with his parents, and a younger brother — his older sister now studies in Cairo. A man of many stories, the one Shetia appears to relish telling the most is about how Salah found his way out of Nagrig via the pitches he’s now attempting to improve.
“His first club was Ittihad in Basyoun,” says Shetia, though he only trained there and never played a competitive game for one of the junior teams. Meanwhile, there was a boy from Nagrig called Sherif, a couple of years older than Salah, who many of the scouts in the region had heard all about.
One of them was called Reda El-Mallah and he arranged a trial match on the pitch Salah now funds. Despite Salah’s age, he was asked to play — to make up the numbers. El-Mallah was impressed but not by Sherif.
“He went to Mohamed and said he’d like to take him to Tanta Club so the coaches there could see him.” It was only OK with Salah if it was OK with his father. The trial, however, ended in disappointment. The message that came back was something like, “We’ll continue to monitor him.” El-Mallah was furious because he thought he’d unearthed a gem. “So, he took him instead to Othmason, Tanta’s rivals,” says Shetia, who describes the dusty fields on the outskirts of Tanta where there were lots of other trial games going on.
Salah was waiting for his turn to show his talent and had not yet changed from his jeans. The ball was cleared from the pitch and he managed to control it using his chest. The coach watching was Farag el Saidy, who said, “We should watch this boy closely.”
By then, Captain Reeo’s scheme with Pepsi meant at least one person outside of Nagrig already knew about Salah’s potential. The player’s determination to become a footballer surprised everyone in Nagrig, even the mayor who could remember a conversation he had with Salah when he was 16 years old and had not yet made his first-team debut.
“He was very ambitious and a bit frustrated,” Shetia says. “He returned to Nagrig and asked himself whether all of his sacrifices had been a waste of time. This is where he learned patience. Though he didn’t have to wait very long for his chance to shine.”
(Photos: Getty Images/Design: Sam Richardson)
