The politics of sport in Sharaa’s Syria

Before Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa set off on his latest foreign tour to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, he attended a symbolic basketball match in Damascus’s Al-Fayhaa Hall between a Lebanese side and a Syrian one. Officials arranged an artistic interlude featuring dancers performing to a song by Missy Elliott. Its sexual innuendo prompted a storm on social media.

Sharaa was later forced, under pressure from the backlash, to explain that he had attended the opening on the suggestion of an aide, had not been briefed on the programme, and was surprised by the performance. Celebrations of that sort, he said, ought to include “something purposeful connected to the traditions and customs of the region”.

A Facebook exchange that drew hundreds of comments captured the ferocity of the divide. One user, “Abu Yahya al-Shami” — pressed by other commenters to reveal his real name, Mohammed al-Hadidi — described what happened as “a grave abomination”. He received hundreds of approving replies. Others disagreed. “Amir al-Shami”, a Palestinian commenter, said it reflected “the openness and modernity of the new Syrian state, which will deny opportunities to those wishing Syria harm”. Another, “Abu Wissam Mansour”, insisted the song promoted success and was simply about winning matches.

Sharaa has been seen before riding a horse and playing billiards. There is also footage of him and his foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani playing basketball with Brad Cooper, head of the American Central Command, and Brigadier General Kevin Lambert, commander of the Joint Task Force, in November 2025. He also met the Syrian national football squad competing in the 2025 Arab Cup, and had earlier telephoned them. Sport even surfaced in banter with Vladimir Putin in October 2025, when Sharaa remarked: “You have a long staircase. Good thing we play sport, so we can get here without getting tired".

The British writer Nick Hornby explained in his book Fever Pitch – memorably rendered in Arabic as Arsenal Destroyed My Life – how allegiance to a football club became a masculine obsession and an emotional shield, combining sport and music. Supporting a team, he argued, is not merely a pastime but part of the architecture of identity. Lives become tied to the historical fortunes of club and country alike; the team, and the supporter within it, become a vessel for social, political and cultural change.

After the Syrian uprising erupted in 2011, the overlap between sport, politics and the personal became impossible to miss. Abdel Baset al-Sarout, goalkeeper for Homs club Al-Karama SC, became one of the most famous faces of the revolt. His life – ending in his death in 2019 while fighting regime forces on the Tel Malah front in northern Hama countryside – offered a striking example of the tangled relationship between the individual and mass political upheaval. He gave voice to that fusion through songs that became emblematic of the revolution.

The other side of the equation was captured by Syrian writer Hussam Jazmati in a 2018 account of an incident in Latakia between Tishreen SC, the home side associated with the regime and its Alawite social base, and Al-Nawaeir of Hama. When the referee awarded a goal against Tishreen, fury swept the crowd so completely that the club president struck the referee in public.

Sectarian resentment was running high among regime loyalists against Eastern Ghouta. The referee’s name was transformed from Zakariya Alloush into Zahran Alloush, invoking the late rebel commander. Fans spread claims that the “Damascene” football federation was run by “internal ISIS men” who had chosen that referee specifically to cheat the “city of martyrs”. Some even nostalgically praised the days of Fawaz al-Assad, notorious for violence against residents and thuggery towards rival clubs.

Clubs and their supporters often escape the script imposed by authority. A study by Ibrahim Zarqa of the club Jableh SC describes its stadium as a gathering place for a divided town. One set of supporters sing for the Jableh player Mahmoud al-Bahr: “O wave, take me with you, O sea, drown me.”

Homs’s Al-Karama SC offers another example of defying neat sectarian or civic labels. In scenes from last February, supporters sang “Labbet Labbet” (a song associated with rebels) declaring loyalty to the new rulers, then in the same match chanted a song by Ali al-Deek, a performer once close to the fallen regime.

Crowds unite through chants voiced by thousands, generating a current that resembles the electricity of great popular moments. Organised into ultras groups, their concerns naturally spill into society, politics and culture. That can bring clashes with rival fans and sometimes with the state. Yet when given a national character, such movements can also become carriers of identity and powerful patriotic narratives.

The film Invictus depicts Nelson Mandela using the 1995 Rugby World Cup to strengthen his policy of national reconciliation. Mandela worked to persuade black South Africans to back the national side, the South Africa national rugby union team, long dominated by whites. Their victory, under the slogan “One Team, One Country”, gave fresh force to a shared national story against the bloody legacy of apartheid.

Sharaa’s attendance at that basketball match, and his other sporting appearances, can be read in the same light. Personal and religious motives are part of it – Islamic tradition encourages teaching children swimming, archery and horsemanship. But it may also reflect a shrewd strategy by Syria’s new rulers: using sport as one of the ligaments of nation-building.