Football star Mohamed Salah was the subject of several op-eds on Wednesday.
Editor-in-chief of the privately-owned Al-Shorouk newspaper Emad El-Din Hussein criticised the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) which attempted to take advantage of Salah without considering sponsorship rights, in addition to bad management of the crisis when their attempt was officially contested. Hussein argued that the issue reflected the wider “mentality” problem spread in state institutions which lack professionalism and think mistakes would go unnoticed when dealing with entities outside Egypt.
Hussein hinted at some Egyptian figures speaking about the Muslim Brotherhood taking advantage of the crisis, but logic is to hold accountable those who caused the crisis escalation in the first place, he said.
In Al-Masry Al-Youm, Khaled Ezzedin wrote that the EFA was well aware of Salah’s contract with his sponsor before putting his poster on the team’s aeroplane, pushing Salah to publicly voice discontent and obtain the largest amount of support suggesting that he was also the one who was able to calm public opinion when he tweeted that he was promised a solution to the problem.
Also, in the same private newspaper, Mosbah Kotb argued that Salah is teaching people how to be civilised, work hard, and be creative, something he said Egyptian officials should consider doing when approaching matters.
Meanwhile, Al-Masry Al-Youm’s Osama Gharib wrote a piece titled “Sleeping with robot Sophia” in which he mocked a preacher for raising the question and concluding that it would not be sinful. Gharib took the example to slam that twisted religious narrative and preachers who place sex at the centre of everything, leading people to focus on the most bizarre related issues.
On a different note, Al-Ahram’s Farouk Gowieda wrote that, recently, Western officials have been calling for amending the Quran by removing verses speaking about the Jews, arguing that this would be an unacceptable attack on a holy book of which 1.5 billion people around the world are proud of and that nobody would dare change parts of the Torah.
Last but not least, amid ongoing debates surrounding the educational system which the Ministry of Education wants to change, Al-Ahram’s Salah Montasser tackled parliament’s requests to discuss the new plan, while on the other hand the minister is trying to impose the system as quickly as possible. As such, Montasser proposed that the minister could proceed with his plan for kindergarten and at the same time open dialogue for the rest of the levels because, so far, the “picture, frankly, remains confused.”
