CAIRO - The rates of divorce, once a taboo topic in Egypt, are high in families where husbands are avid soccer fans, according to a joint study prepared by two Cairo-based prominent researchers. The research, conducted by Hamdi Abdul Azeem and Mona el-Sayyed Hafez of Ain Shams University, found that the more husbands loved watching football matches, the higher the incidence of divorce. Their study concluded that marriages were most unstable when men focused on football and women were not interested in it. "The highest-risk combination is one in which the wife does not like football and the man engages in watching soccer matches and following up news of soccer players on a daily base," Abdul Azeem, an economics professor, found. Sociology Professor Hafez said she had spent a lot of time examining and trying to explain the link between a husband's love for football and divorce rates. "The results suggest that the risk of divorce among families, where husbands are addicts to watching football matches, is substantially high," she wrote. Om Mohamed, a Cairo woman, said that her husband had divorced her after she refused to allow him to watch a football match by his favourite team, Al-Ahly. "Watching football matches led to daily arguments between me and my husband, who finally divorced me," the study quoted her as saying. Soccer matches, with their high tensions, have a huge following in Egypt, particularly among husbands and some extent women and young girls. Om Mohamed said her husband had been picking arguments with her for more than four years on the ground that she did not like seeing football matches on TV channels or supporting his beloved team. She complained about her husband's “very cruel treatment” against her when Al-Ahly lost a match. "That ill treatment included insults and sometimes physical abuse that finally led to marital split," Om Mohamed, a mother of two children, said. "For many Egyptians, divorce is the end of everything. But, it is strange that football has become one of the reasons leading to marital split, " Professor Hafez wrote in the study, which said that divorce had been growing slowly but steadily in Egypt, specially during times of soccer matches. "The divorce rate is still higher than in most other Arab countries particularly during the soccer league season," she wrote, adding that extremist soccer-loving husbands are in full emotional chaos and need psychological help. "Such excessive love for football by husbands brings about a state of panic to the whole household where the wife suffers from the pain of divorce," she said. Om Mohamed gave a detailed account of the tragedies she underwent as a woman, who was married to an avid football-loving husband. "I was beaten up and insulted both physically and morally when Al-Ahly lost a match." The study found that in most cases, the reason behind the divorce was football mania. In these cases, the husband would spend hours watching football matches paying no attention to their wives or mal-treating them. Abdul Azeem wrote that the growth of divorce rates is related to spending money on buying tickets or flags by husbands, who loved going to the stadium to watch football games. "Such expenditures tighten the budget of families to the point that they are barely able to meet their basic needs, and therefore leaving no money for recreation. In addition, a man and his wife need to communicate in order to stay strong, but unfortunately soccer-instigated tension means that espousal violence is getting the better of people," Abdul Azeem wrote. He added that even habits such as yearly trips to summer resorts had been cancelled in the thousands because of the recent wave of football matches and high prices. "It is a reality today that millions of husbands have no choice but to stay home, seeking entertainment from watching soccer matches. In doing so, families barely talk to each other any more and their feelings are always tense," he wrote. Soccer is Egypt's top sport and its fixtures usually draw a high turnout. "Certainly husbands prefer watching football matches in their quest to escape their economic and marital problems, " Abdul Azeem wrote. He said that football matches provided a good reason for growing rates of divorce. Moreover, Abdul Azeem noted that most of the divorce cases took place among newly married couples, which he attributed to the fact that it is simply easier to take the decision in the first five years of the marriage.
