The day we stopped cheering

As a sport deeply loved by the masses, football is known for its strong and vibrant fan culture, marked by tight affiliation and performative practices of loyalty and support. Fans identify with their chosen teams through inherited family affiliations, allegiance to their local areas, or admiration for specific players on international teams. In all cases, however, fans become part of a larger community connected by their love and devotion to their teams.

At matches, football fans are like additional players who complete the team by cheering it on to victory, while inspiring fear in the opposing side to weaken its performance. Cairo Stadium has been dubbed the “field of terror” because fans there have a notable ability to intimidate visiting teams. To cheer or distract players on the field, fans chant, roar, drum, sing and blow horns, in addition to waving flags and creating pictorial formations that represent team identity or suggest strength, such as eagles composed of coordinated colored sheets of paper.

Yet this vibrant culture began to change after 72 Ahlawy Ultras fans were killed in Port Said Stadium in 2012, their blood shed in the bleachers where they had cheered on their team. Then, in 2015, twenty Zamalek fans were killed in a stampede, trapped at a bottleneck entrance to Cairo’s Air Defence Stadium as they attempted to enter and support their team. This tragedy was followed by widescale arrests of football fans. Fear spread among fans and their families that fan practices could lead them to similar fates, especially given that fans had participated in the January 2011 revolution and had treated stadiums as arenas in which they could practice a freedom of speech unavailable elsewhere.

Authorities introduced policies to reduce attendance at football matches and imposed restrictions on fan practices that curtailed their energetic exuberance. Then, in 2019, ticket booking was assigned to private company Tazkarti, which coordinates with security agencies and requires fans to open accounts and register personal information. The system denies tickets to some fans through a strict vetting process and prevents many others from attending due to its high prices. In all cases, for fans, obtaining football tickets has become either a far-fetched dream or a perceived flirtation with death, given fears of potential violence or arrest.

As a result, stadiums have largely emptied out, and the energetic fan base has been replaced by a carefully selected audience of spectators who are not committed to interactive fan practices, but instead attend matches as entertainment, akin to going to the cinema or theater. In the absence of fans’ excitable energy, stadium organizers have in some cases resorted to playing recorded cheers over loudspeakers. Deprived of the opportunity to engage in their customary cheering practices, many traditional fans now make do with watching games in cafés or at home. While this reflects their continued love for the game, it does not substitute for the collective rituals to which they once devoted themselves with such passion.

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