“It is truly and utterly upsetting, but at the end of the day, I knew where they were coming from,” says 28-year-old Esraa Osama, one of Egypt’s most prominent football players. Perhaps one of the most significant positive impacts there is on Egyptian youth is sports. It keeps them out of trouble and teaches them the much needed discipline and team spirit. However, in Egypt, it is only seen as a mere hobby and not a valid career path. For Esraa, seeing her dream of being a professional soccer player slip away was confusing. “It was frustrating and quite confusing. My parents, especially my father, always supported the idea of me playing football,” explains Esraa, “Once I started pursuing it as a career, however, that is when all the support stopped.” The reason why the majority of Egyptian parents refuse to acknowledge the fact that sports can be a well grounded career path is due to the fact that culturally, many Egyptians view sports only as an entertaining waste of one’s time and not an actual career choice for both young men and women. “I often wished that I belonged…
