This competition was actually a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be. The only annoying part of it was watching players touch their foreheads to the ground after scoring a goal. But it was refreshing seeing that there were plenty of women in the stands who were not wearing headscarves. Some were wearing hats that were a sort of beret or fez (here and here). Occasionally, I saw men wearing such hats. Then there were Egyptian fans pretending to be pharaohs (here, and while this comes from a different competition, I saw plenty like it in this one).
Now the nature of the competition seems to be that it was for Arabic-speaking countries. It wasn’t for ethnically-Arab countries because some that were included (such as Sudan and Mauritania) had all-black teams, while Morocco probably had plenty of Berbers. And Egypt seems to consider itself pharaonic rather than Arab. So, it had to be for Arabic-speaking countries. Anyway, I pointed out the other day the oddity of starting the game with a countdown, in English rather than Arabic.
Another oddity is that it is typical these days to indicate which team is which in the little box in the upper left part of the screen that gives the score and time elapsed by having a small strip of color by the name of each team which shows what colors their uniforms are. (Does anyone know what those boxes are called?) This time that wasn’t done. Instead, they had the countries’ flags pictured. Now I would often start watching in the middle of the game and had no idea which team was which. The flags were often of no help since if one team’s uniform was red, while both flags had red in them, then no info was conveyed. Nor were the names of the players helpful since they were almost all Arabic names (though one Tunisian player was called Hannibal). So I had to wait for cues from the announcers, which was mildly frustrating.
Another oddity was seeing Budweiser advertised in the stadium. Was that meant for the fans? Surely not, since most were Muslims, and Muslims generally don’t drink. I guess, then, that it was meant for the viewing audience, though it’s hard to know how many outsiders were watching.
Finally, the announcers for today’s final observed that the Paris police had warned fans of the two teams, Algeria and Tunisia, not to celebrate on the Champs Elysees, after having to deal with riotous Algerian fans the other day. Well, when you let in lots of immigrants, that’s the sort of thing you have to worry about.
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