In search of lost space

Clubs and youth centres, though popular in Egypt, suffer at the lower-income bracket from a lack of necessary equipment and space restrictions. Alaa Shahine writes
It is a small, nondescript two-floor building. The first floor is composed of two small rooms, equipped with the bare necessities for the administration. The second floor comprises a room for chess and karate, another for ping-pong, and a third for backgammon and dominos. The only indicator of this locale's odd identity is a faded Arabic sign, with the inscription "El-Hawwar Sporting Club" on it.
The first time I visited the club was in 1993. I went for the sole reason that it was the only place in the Nile city of Mansoura with a chess team. To my amazement, a champion's talents were being honed in the cramped ping-pong room beside us. Egypt's junior champion spent hours practicing in the tiny room beside me. Two years later, Abdel-Moneim Omara, then president of the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, expressed the same awe-struck amazement that I had experienced upon first hearing the news.
"This is the place where Egypt's champion is practicing?" he gasped, pointing to the tiny room in shock. He was clearly flabbergasted and set his mind upon effecting a change. Following his visit, the club was allocated land overlooking the Nile to construct spacious new premises.
It was easier said than done, however. Soon after former prime minister Kamal El-Ganzouri took charge of the Council -- appointing Omara as executive president -- work at the new location slowed down significantly. The problem, as always, was money.
"Omara is a close friend of the club's president, an influential member of the People's Assembly, and that is why we used to receive sound financial backup," said Zakaria El-Shahat, El- Hawwar's Secretary-General at the time. "But now he doesn't enjoy the authority to do this any more."
Seven years later, the club stands in the same location; no playground, no upgraded sports facilities. Overall, absolutely no change.
The outskirts of the city are not the only places in which the situation is dire. In Cairo, youth centres are facing similar problems; a case of inadequate financial support coupled with an antiquated managerial systems.
"Members here can only practice three kinds of sports," Hisham Mohamed, member of the Manial youth centre, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "They can bodybuild, weightlift, or do karate. The management has cancelled football, basketball and other sports activities. For no good reason," he added.
Standing in the small, five-aside playground where I used to play many years ago, I see little improvement beyond a makeshift gym and a miniature concrete building in the back. There have been some changes, however -- one of the basketball posts has been removed leaving its forlorn twin standing solitary.
Gazing around dismally at the crumbling surroundings, Mohamed continues:
"We don't have adequate sports equipment," he laments. "And when members want to play football, the management refuses to provide them with a ball, and charges them LE10 per hour for using the playground!"
While the cure to the inadequate facilities lies in expanding the available space, Mohamed says that even this would do little good. "because of the board's old-fashioned and bureaucratic approach."
That is his perspective, at least. The management has called his critique unfair.
"In light of our modest budget, charging members and other people for using the playground is one of our fund-raising means," Samir Amin, the centre's treasurer, told the Weekly. "I think we are doing a good job serving the neighborhood, and when the new building is completed, more activities will take place and we will reform the playground as well," he explained.
Oddly enough, charging people for using fields and playgrounds is becoming a commonplace money-making technique in clubs across Cairo.
"You can't use any proper field for free now," said Nasser Hussein, member of El-Talbia Club in the district of Haram. "We rent the club's sandy playground for LE25 per hour during the day, and LE30 at night, which basically means that we can spend as much as LE50 every time we come here to play, as no one plays for only an hour."
The absence of open-green areas in the overcrowded cities, coupled with sky-rocketing subscription prices in big clubs, leaves small, under- equipped clubs and youth centres like El- Hawwar as the only place where the youth can exercise. A problem, foreign experts agree, which reflects Egypt's regrettable decline in the sports arena -- and particularly football.
"Egyptians are screaming and complaining about the lack of natural talents," Dutchman Wil Korver, one of the world's top football experts and currently in charge of Ahli's juniors' academy, told the Weekly. "They haven't asked themselves a simple question -- where can children play football in Cairo? One rarely finds open playgrounds or decent youth centres where people can enjoy the game."
His voice is not the only one pointing this out in a country which, despite being sports-crazy, lacks a viable infrastructure. Korver's perspective is echoed by Reiner Zobel, Ahli's former German coach, in a slightly different form.
"My kids used to go and play in the gardens and parks in Germany," he said. "If I brought them here, they would be run over by cars!"
Even for those who belong to wealthier clubs such as Ahli and Zamalek, access is still difficult. In Ahli's 2000 General Assembly, the board turned down a motion to allow members at the Nasr City branch to use its fields. Their excuse was that the fields are for the use of those Ahli teams that partake in official competitions. Only those who have reached the highest subscription- fee levels -- at the Heliopolis, Shooting, and Gezira clubs -- can enjoy the luxury of free, full- time access. The least, it seems, that they deserve to receive in return for their vast investment.
"Our sports facilities and playgrounds are confined only to our members," Mohsen Tantawi, a Shooting Club board member, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Even when it comes to teams who represent the club in official competitions, participation is confined to our members," he continued. "We don't recruit players from other clubs like Ahli and Zamalek do."
Such a practice, he believes, is unjust. Besides, the results of the clubs' policy is a wealth of promising new talent, he says. The Shooting Club has won many distinctions in sports like karate and tae-kwon-do. "Even in football, we have promising junior teams that attract the attention of Ahli and Zamalek scouts every season," Tantawi added.
The problem, it seems, is that the nation's population does not realise just how serious a problem the lack of space can be.
"Sports and physical exercises are means to avoid contracting psychological diseases like depression," Khalil Fadel, a psychiatrist and member of the London Royal College for Psychiatrists, told the Weekly. "Working-out releases physical energy and leads to catharsis, a form of psychological purification," Fadel continues. "The lack of movement, on the other hand, is parallel to depression in that it leads to retardation. There is a close attachment between the psyche and the body as both affect each other," he says. "When the person runs or plays football, his effort releases endorphins which are responsible for regulating pain and pleasure, and which lead to the euphoria that follows playing a tough football match for instance."
There is, of course, another side to the picture -- the social dimension of sports. According to Fadel, sport affords teenagers the unique feeling of 'belonging' -- being part of a team, supporting it, and fighting for its success. It allows them, Fadel says, to strive for completeness -- a critical aspect of character formation at their age.
Apart from Fadel's utopia, the Ministry of Youth is striving to equip an estimated 26,000 youth centres across the country with their basic equipment needs -- a move which was initiated after Youth Minister Alieddin Helal took over his post. At a press conference, immediately after being sworn in as minister, he told reporters what he thinks of the situation. To his dismay, he said, issues like developing youth centres turned out to be nothing but "hollow slogans."
The irony comes in centres to be found in places such as El-Halafi village in Kafr El-Sheikh governorate. There, too, space is a problem. This shortcoming has been remedied, however, through the provision of billiard tables. There is an answer to that brow-raising phenomenon. The tale goes back to the mid-1990s when a famous retired footballer imported an excessive number of billiard tables for distribution in local centres. Suddenly, it seemed, the centres were closed down and the billiard tables were purchased by the Supreme Council of Youth and Sports, which promptly distributed them to youth centres around the country.
This was an admirable and charitable response, aside from being satisfying. The issue, though, reaches far beyond the trivialities of what one club boasts over another. Rather, it roots itself into the nation's youth and their well-being; the next generation and its future. Sports is not simply a matter of fun and games. The nation's mental and psychological well-being, experts agree, rests partly upon the creation of space.
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