We are all aware of the financial difficulties caused in this country by clubs having had to play behind closed doors in the last two seasons but in my efforts to attend a game in the Egyptian Premier League next week I discovered the following:
Fans of the Egyptian Premier League were barred from attending their teams’ matches since massacres that took place after the match between Al-Ahly SC and Al-Masry SC in Port Said in February 2012, resulting in 74 deaths and over 500 injuries.
There was an attempt to bring the fans back to the stands in 2015 but the move was dropped after 20 Zamalek fans lost their lives while attempting to enter a stadium.
Subsequently, Covid came along and it seems that only last October were clubs permitted to have a couple of thousand fans attend games in stadiums that accommodate up to 75,000 fans.
For my part, an Egyptian gentleman I will be staying with (and a fan of Cairo's Zamalek team) has assisted me in going through the motions of creating a required Fan ID that is necessary to purchase tickets - and it even involved declaring one's blood group! I somehow don't expect to see next Wednesday's game but watching Egyptian Premier League games has been a minority pleasure even in Egypt since 2012, it seems.