Where's Whalley? Permanently out to sea.

The setting sun leaks a soft pink into the skyline. The thunderous noise from the sea of red, white and black painted faces, contorted with excitement and fever, rumbles across the stadium. Flags are waved high in the air as novelty horns are blown and chants are bellowed on a constant loop.
“Misr, Misr, Allahu Akbar” Egypt, Egypt, God is great.

This mantra rings joyfully hopefully and proudly through my ears, sung by tens of thousands of people giddy on the prospect of victory. The atmosphere is so contagious that even I - a keen hater of sports, and one who thinks football is particularly overrated – can’t help getting swept up in the furor of watching Egypt play Algeria in the World Cup qualifier on home turf.

Egypt and Algeria draw two all and Cairo unravels into maniacal jubilation. It doesn’t matter that victory isn’t theirs just yet because neither is defeat and triumphant potential lingers. Walking the streets homeward bound I am engulfed by a city celebrating. The cacophony of noise is deafening and streets overflow with delirium.

Parents hold their toddlers and small children out of car windows as they wave and flap Egyptian flags in the post match traffic jam – a seemingly endless vehicle stand still. People hang over balconies or out of car windows. Face painted men run and dance down pot holed streets, they lie on their backs in the middle of the road, stamping their feet and hugging their Egyptian flags in deranged euphoria. Some beat drums others light gas from aerosol cans and feverishly swing their flaming arms about. Cars crawl slowly by while motorcycles creep past them as their drivers bounce their bikes through the bedlam. All of this noise and chaos, the clapping, beating, chanting, stomping, screaming, crying, honking and bouncing is done to the rhythm of the night. Egypt. Egypt. God is great.

From my bedroom in my ninth floor apartment I can still hear the noise from the streets. It will continue into the early morning. In a country where class, religion and government divide, football is a shared faith and a unifier, it is not to be scoffed at. I fall asleep to the sound of people brought together by football, united by country and by a collective hope of what may come as well as what they have already achieved.