Belated respect to the All Whites. New Zealand represent!
Bahrain’s unexpected defeat leaves the Arab World with only one representative in South Africa. Sayef Mohammed Adnan’s penalty miss in Wellington will have done more than just dampen the spirits on the Emir’s beach. It invites a significant Arab cultural deficit extending well beyond Bahrain.
This may well go unnoticed or be easily forgotten by Arab scholars and Arab media busy with grim development statistics and wars or captivated by ceremonial comings and goings and fashionable American and European diplomats and stars. It should not.
I accept it is difficult to consider the importance of football in the context of the harsher social, economic and environmental realities that dog the Arab World: Desertification. The highest birth rates in the world. High unemployment. 30% Illiteracy. Unrepresentative political systems. Over reliance on oil. Violations of women’s rights. But football does provide confidence and pride in ways social scientists and economists cannot measure. Ask a Brazilian.
The Arab World is pinned in it’s own half.
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