It’s not every day that a gift can manage to piss off an entire country, but it seems that Messi’s gift to the host of the Egyptian television show “Yes I am Famous” has done just that.
Messi donated a pair of football boots to the show in the name of Charity. He did so on live TV by handing them over to host Mona al-Sharqawi. Pretty straight forward, right?
Wrong.
Per the BBC:
What Messi seems to have failed to appreciate is that in Egypt and other Arab countries in the region shoes can be used as a symbol of disrespect or insult. So some Egyptians took offence and turned to social media to express their anger.
“This is the most disgusting. He was paid thousands of dollars and at the end he donated his shoes and the stupid presenter was happy," tweeted one user called @Sala77ar7ash. Another user called @sulimanahmad670 commented: "Egypt's name is greater than Messi's shoes. This is a big insult to Egypt," wrote @sulimanahmad670.”
In Arab culture, showing the soles of your shoes can be seen as especially insulting. The Arabic expression "to hit someone with a shoe" is offensive. You might remember the case of Iraqi journalist Muntasir al-Zaydi, who threw his shoes at President George W Bush in protest at a press conference in Baghdad in 2008.
And there you have it. A cultural stigma that Lionel Messi (and apparently his PR team) had absolutely no idea about turned a gesture of good will into the equivalent of spitting in someone’s face.
Hasasin on his show. Photo: BBC
Messi’s gift struck such a strong note within Egypt that Said Hasasin, an Egyptian politician, took off his own shoes on live television (because life’s just a reality show, right?) and gave the following statement to Messi.
“Whose shoes do you want to sell, Messi? How much do you think it will get? You don’t know that the nail of a baby Egyptian is worth more than your shoes? Keep your shoes to yourself.”
Furthering the s***storm that Messi’s gift started, El-Sharqawi (you know, the host that received the boots) defended herself and the show by saying that she never specifically said the boots would be given to an Egyptian charity.
“This is so false. It’s a trend on our show that we take a souvenier from our guest and put it on auction for charity,” El-Sharqawi told news agency Ahram. “I am surprised, I didn’t say we will be giving it to charity in Egypt or any other place. I don’t know why they said he is presenting it to Egypt. This was never said.”
What the actual f***, guys. On the one hand, we have a politician using a gift from the golden boy of football as an excuse to grandstand about how there's no respect. On the other we have a TV host defending herself with the equivalent of "but that's not what I meant." And on a third (becuase this story is as strange as having three hands) Egypt is so pissed off that it would rather deny a charity money than accept a pair of football boots.
The world is a strange, strange place.
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