Talent and tactic: The story of Hussein Hegazi, father of Egyptian football

In Egypt, he is remembered as the ‘father of Egyptian football.’ An exceptional footballer, Hussein Hegazi was the first African player to play in England. He was deemed by The Times the “most conspicuous” and “most promising” player, and the “mainstay” of the Cambridge side.

Little is known, however, about Hegazi’s style of play, or what distinguished his game.

Hegazi was born in 1889 and grew up in colonial Egypt, where two distinct physical cultures existed. Many of the British soldiers who took part in the occupation of 1882 were footballers who had previously participated in the English Football Association (FA) tournaments.

For these soldiers, football was, in George Orwell’s terms, “war minus the shooting.” Until the mid-nineteenth century, English football emphasised physical strength, and was mostly about “pain, brutality, and manliness” as British sports writer Jonathan Wilson argues in his book Inverting the Pyramid.

"Across the vast British empire, football was the perfect sport for military camps. The football team, like the battalion, was conceived as a machine"

Because Law #6 (the precursor to the offside laws) initially banned any forward passing, football was primarily a dribbling game in which players, especially attacking players, were strong, well-built, and used their physical strength to dribble to the goal. Team members followed the player with the ball closely to take it onward if he was stopped by the opponent, but did not expect to receive passes from their teammates, for passing was seen as inferior.

As the British colonial troops landed in Egypt, teamplay and tactics were becoming more central to the game. In November 1870, the FA adopted an amendment to Law #6, which considered a player to have infringed on the rule, “only if he were both beyond the penultimate man and in the final fifteen yards of the field.”

This change brought to the fore the importance of passing, which was amplified with Scotland’s victory over the more muscular English side in 1873, in which the victors relied on passing to avoid one-on-one contests in which they were likely to be outmuscled. Commentators remained sceptical of the passing game, which they were concerned jeopardised the manliness of football.

Across the vast British empire, football was the perfect sport for military camps. The football team, like the battalion, was conceived as a machine, in which roles of different members were coordinated, and the consorted movements created space that allowed for scoring goals.

In Egypt, British troops stationed in Cairo, Alexandria and the Canal Zone organised themselves into teams. Each team trained regularly, and, in football tournaments were organised during leisure time.

Local Egyptians watched these tournaments and took interest in the game, which they soon creolized, adapting the game to their own cultures and realities. Unlike the tactical and combative game of the British military camps, the football played in Egypt’s streets and alleyways was more recreational, haphazard, and artsy.

It reflected the norms of the contemporaneous physical culture in Egypt, in which play was about improvising and art, hardly involving teams, or resulting in winners and losers. At least not definitively.

Street football followed the same rules. It was played in alleyways, the narrow dimensions of which defined the playing field. Players, often children, usually wore their home garments, and many begged their mothers to make their garments shorter to make running around easier.

The rules of the game were continuously negotiated: the number of players on each side (and whether that was equal on both sides), what constitutes a foul, the length of the game, and rules for shooting the ball were not fixed concepts. Two stones designated the width of the goal, but in the absence of the bar, players had to negotiate whether a certain shot was too high.

It is in these alleyways that Hegazi started playing. His well-off rural family had moved to Cairo’s historical neighbourhood of Al-Hussein shortly before he was born.

Like other kids, young Hegazi played barefoot. The ball was made of socks and a cover, and since winning and losing was not an integral part of the game, children were keener to display skill and control of the ball.

"They saw it as an opportunity to assert themselves against their colonisers, and challenge the colonial claim that the Egyptian body was weak, insufficiently masculine and therefore unfit for self-rule"

When Hegazi’s family soon sent him to school to become an effendi, a middle class educated man, the skills he developed in the alleyway proved indispensable. Schools had taken interest in the football game since 1895, when an astounding victory of an effendi team over a British side piqued the effendi interest in the game.

They saw it as an opportunity to assert themselves against their colonisers, and challenge the colonial claim that the Egyptian body was weak, insufficiently masculine and therefore unfit for self-rule. In the following years, the interest in football grew in effendi schools, talented players were recruited as students, and coaches were hired to train them.

Hegazi played for Sa‘idiyya School for four years without losing a single game. His skill and control of the ball, acquired from playing in the alleyways, was now buttressed with speed, pace, and strength, which he developed through the school’s physical education curriculum. His colleagues and coaches praised his strength, discipline and skill.

When Hegazi arrived in London for university, the football game was becoming more tactical. There was a growing understanding that football “wasn’t about each team turning up and playing in exactly the same way week after week,” as Wilson writes. It was already common for team members to meet before big games to discuss tactics in the dressing room.

It is in this context that Hegazi became a superstar. Combining the skill of Egyptian street football, the physical strength characterising the effendi game, and the tactics of English football distinguished Captain Heggi, as he was nicknamed.

He was quickly recruited by Dulwich Hamlet, and represented the side for three years, while also joining Cambridge University, where he received the Full Blue – the highest honour that may be bestowed on a Cambridge sportsman.

In 1911, he joined the Wanderers (a team of English, Scottish, and Welsh players) on a European tour. King Alfonso XIII of Spain was in the audience and reportedly summoned Hegazi after the game to ask him whether there were “players like him” in Egypt. Hegazi confirmed there were “many” talented players.

A description of a football match in an Egyptian magazine in 1922 sums up Hegazi’s combination of talent and tactic, which distinguished his style. During this game, in which ‘Team Hegazi’ played against a British side in Egypt, Hegazi “took the ball, dribbled and passed a ball, with his trademark style between the centre defenders to Sayyid Abaza, who shot scoring the first goal,” and then, in the second half, he “received the ball, dribbled through midfielders and defenders, and scored.”

Hegazi returned to Egypt at the cusp of World War One. The Egypt he returned to was markedly different from Egypt he left a few years earlier. While in 1910 there was only one store that sold sports apparel in Cairo, reflecting limited interest in the game, football had gained momentum when he returned.

"Combining the skill of Egyptian street football, the physical strength characterising the effendi game, and the tactics of English football distinguished Captain Heggi, as he was nicknamed"

It was no longer a British game, but a universal platform for contestation. New sports clubs were established, newspapers were developing sports sections, pavilions were built for spectators to watch games, and the urban poor were drawn to the effendi game.

Hegazi was an important part of these developments: he soon formed Team Hegazi, which toured Egypt, playing against British sides and, with each victory, boosted interest in the game. In the following years, he moved between clubs, winning titles with at least three of them, and captained the Egyptian team in the Olympic games of 1920 and 1924.

His successful career was instrumental to the emergence of football in his home country. After he retired, movies, literature and newspapers celebrated the ‘golden age’ of Egyptian football, an age that was dominated by Captain Heggi, the man who made football an Egyptian game.

Ibrahim Elhoudaiby is a visiting assistant professor of Middle Eastern and Historical Studies at Bard College. He is a historian of the modern middle east, with a specialty in the political and legal history of Egypt. His recent publications include “The National Game: Genealogy of the Egyptian Football League,” in Football in the Middle East: State, Society, and the Beautiful Game (2022); and “The Birth of the Investor: Shareholding, Modern Islamic Law, and the Rise of Islamic Finance,” in Islamic Law and Society (2022).