JEDDAH, 26 September 2003 — The British Council in Saudi Arabia, in conjunction with UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) organized a football exchange program recently to bring together young Saudi and British sportsmen. The aim of this program was to build community bridges between two differing cultures and to utilize the universal game of football as a means to find common ground between the two countries.
Manchester was ideal, in that it boasts the largest and most prosperous football club in the world, (Manchester United) but still retains the friendliness and directness that are characteristic of England’s North.
Seven young Saudi players, two of whom are professionals in the Saudi Premier League team Al Ittihad, including the promising young star Muhammad Amin Haidar, traveled to the United Kingdom and met fellow British soccer players from the university and a number of local youth teams.
The young Saudis were received with such hospitality that even they were surprised by the degree of attention caused by their presence.
Sky News was keen to interview them and many college teams were excited with the opportunity to test the young players’ skills. Everyone who saw them was most impressed by their level of skill and commitment to the game.
For most of these players it was the first time they had traveled to the UK, and they found Western customs, strange at times. These young men were not used to being in an environment in which both members of the opposite sex freely mixed and conversed with one another.
They were not used to seeing women walking, let alone driving, and due to this culture shock, certain members were overawed. These individuals, who had not been exposed to other ways of life, not surprisingly, found it difficult to adapt to their new-found freedom.
One of the things the British Council has learned from this experience is that in future it would be appropriate to give individuals a more precise idea of what exactly to expect in a different cultural environment. Nevertheless, despite these cultural differences, the program was a great success. Overall, bridges were built with the British getting to know more about the Saudi way of life and the Saudis learning about British culture and hospitality. This event underlines the importance of encouraging the younger generations of our country, like these young players and their student counterparts fortunate enough to be sponsored by the British Council to study in the UK, to gain access to the colourful variations of human cultures in order to help them develop more fully as individuals so that they may contribute to the further development and education of Saudi society.
The program, organized by the British Council and UMIST was truly a commendable accomplishment, and must be continued in the spirit of encouraging mutual respect and coexistence.
