By: Ahmed Hassan and Christine Awny

We seem to have become accustomed to the idea that the West has the upper hand over the Arabs and the Egyptians; Especially in the mathematical field, and since you are reading now in the section on misconceptions about the West, you may think that it is a misconception in our minds and we will work to correct it, but in reality no, this is a reality that we must recognize, and we also have to believe that the differences are very close and the capabilities and talents are present and examples are so many.

For example, you may pass a cafe and find it crowded with many people shouting and interacting strongly with a match, then you look and find “Mohamed Salah”, outperforming the world’s top stars, and everyone is proud of him as if he is a member of their family and they cannot be happy to see him on screens and platforms. coronation Until he became an icon and a role model for everyone to follow.

The rule can be broken, and it is not an impossible thing, but what do we need to reach that stage? What are the basic differences? How can we overcome the negatives that prevent us from achieving this? 

This is what we will answer in our interview with "Ahmed Ezz El Din," a sports analyst and presenter of sports programmes.

First of all, what are the reasons, from your point of view, that make the West excel in sports?

Ahmed Ezz El-Din opened his speech by saying that talent is available in all places, for every individual has a talent that God Almighty granted him, but the real success lies in discovering these talents and helping those who have the talent first in realizing and absorbing it from childhood and then working on developing it, and therefore revealing talents is The first and most important step, and after that comes our duty to provide the necessary tools and capabilities for success, as it remains a necessary element even if a person is naturally gifted, because no talent remains without capabilities.

He continued, this is the main reason why the West excels us in sports, as the problem does not lie in their having more talents, but rather in their success in creating a suitable environment for the development of athletes and helping them reach the top of their levels, and working on all aspects, not just one, from science, technology and physical fitness to them. In addition to working on building the personality of the athlete from a young age.

He added, therefore, talent in the West has a greater chance of growth and development, not to mention its greater chance of reaching major clubs and world championships.

And do you think that the saying “a hero can make himself by himself, regardless of the surrounding environment” is true?

Certainly, Ahmed said, the hero can make himself by himself, defying all the circumstances surrounding him, and there are many examples of that, most notably "Mohamed Salah", who started from scratch, as the most successful in football, the most popular sport in Egypt.

Do you think there are misconceptions about sports in Egypt? 

“Of course there are wrong ideas, and what distinguishes the West from Egyptians in sports is the mentality,” Ezz El-Din said. He added, children in the West, from their infancy, deal with sports as a basic thing and one of the necessities of life, while the Egyptian child considers it only a game and entertainment.

 And he added the players in the West deal with sports very professionally and not as a means of entertainment, so they devote many aspects of their lives and make great sacrifices in order to reach the pinnacle of success in the sports fields.

 In your opinion, why do we seek help from foreign experts in most sports? Is it a "Khawaja complex" or are they more developed?

Seeking help from foreign experts to develop the sports field is certainly not a negative thing, as most countries in the world do that, as some of them may have a wide knowledge in some fields compared to the situation here, but the negative thing is that we bring these models and do not benefit from them, so we do not train cadres and youth similar to the West, We do not transfer experiences to the younger generations so that we can build a successful athlete.

What is lacking to compete with the West and outperform them in international forums?

What we certainly lack in order to be able to lead in the sports field is to provide the appropriate environment for the success of the athlete himself, such as providing various sports fields, sports stadiums, and gymnasiums, as well as the necessity of making different sports available in various places for free. We must work to search for talents in those sports fields and adopt them from a young age, then the third step comes by charting a path for them to success and providing them with some solutions to the obstacles they face in that path.

We see that in the West, university expenses are linked to the practice of sports, so whoever practices a sport and excels in it will have a reduction in university expenses, as a kind of encouragement to exercise and take care of it as an essential part of young people’s lives, just like education, and commented Sadly, "Stimulating talent is a very important positive factor that is unfortunately lacking in our Arab world."

 What do you think of the Egyptian athletes who decided to play for other nationalities abroad? And what`s the reason?

"Every person has his own story and his own story that we cannot know all the scenes surrounding him, and therefore it is difficult to generalize some individual cases as a general problem, unless those cases are repeated, and therefore we must realize that there is mismanagement, of course, in dealing with sports talents. At that time, there will be an urgent need to analyze this phenomenon, find out its causes, and work to find solutions to prevent it from recurring again.

Visit Wa3y Blog: http://wa3y2023.blogspot.com