Muslims of Egypt and Iran got no support from Caucasus at FIFA World Cup

The participation of Muslim teams, namely, of the national teams of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, in the FIFA World Cup aroused no surge of interest in Northern Caucasus, even taking into account the accommodation of the Egyptian team in Chechnya. This opinion was voiced by the experts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that starting from June 14, Russia hosted the FIFA World Cup-2018. For the period of the competitions, Grozny accommodated athletes from the Egyptian national team, who unsuccessfully performed at the 2018 FIFA World Cup: all three matches ended in defeats for them.

Football is traditionally not a very popular sport in the Caucasus, where the main regional sport is wrestling, noted Asker Namitokov, a wrestling coach from Adygea.

He believes that football is relatively less developed and "promoted" in the Caucasus. "Of course, Caucasian people like football. But it is not as developed as wrestling, which still has a massive character in Northern Caucasus, unlike football. Yes, people can watch some matches, but fighting and results of wrestlers are more important for them," noted Asker Namitokov.

According to the trainer's estimates, wrestling competitions gather at least twice as many spectators in the region as football matches. "If 500 people go to watch football matches, then wrestling competitions gather 1000 spectators, that is, at least twice as many. Residents of Northern Caucasus believe wrestling is a more spectacular sport than football," Asker Namitokov noted.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on July 15, 2018 at 05:51 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.