What hits you most in Cairo, after the noise, is the sheer number of people.<\/p>\n
Egypt has a population of about 120 million. Its capital city is home to 23 million.<\/p>\n
For context, the population of Liverpool is just under one million.<\/p>\n
Come to appreciate that and only then do you begin to understand the scale of national fury that followed when Mohamed Salah gave his incendiary interview on 6 December, claiming Liverpool had “thrown him under the bus”.<\/p>\n
“This interview was like a revolution in Egypt,” says Diaa El-Sayed, the former Egypt assistant coach, who has known Salah since he was 16. <\/p>\n
“99% of Egypt supports Salah, and you can see from the reaction at Anfield that the Liverpool fans support him too.”<\/p>\n
Across British media, Salah was criticised heavily for his actions.<\/p>\n
Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher branded the interview a “disgrace” and accused the 33-year-old of throwing the club under the bus. <\/p>\n
Others insisted Salah was in the wrong for airing his grievances in public. Yet in Cairo, the ‘Egyptian King’ can do no wrong.<\/p>\n
“Before Salah, no-one supported Liverpool here,” says Noura Essam, a Cairo local. “Before Salah, we didn’t have a global figure, so we will always support him.”<\/p>\n
During the 2018 presidential election, more than one million Egyptians crossed out the names of the listed candidates and cast their vote for Salah.<\/p>\n
He is an unofficial leader. In these parts, he is known as the ‘Fourth Pyramid’.<\/p>\n
Around Ramses Square, the Cairo transport hub where Salah would change buses to reach training during his nine-hour round commute as a teenager, the cafe-goers describe their disbelief when he was named on the bench for three games in a row by Arne Slot and then left out of the squad for the Champions League trip to Inter Milan.<\/p>\n
“When Liverpool played in Milan, all of Egypt supported Inter Milan,” says Osama Ismail, a former Egyptian FA spokesman.<\/p>\n
Ismail, who worked with Salah, describes him as “not arrogant but confident” and is adamant the forward wants to continue playing for Liverpool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What hits you most in Cairo, after the noise, is the sheer number of people. Egypt has a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-195639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}