Team sport discipline mirrors religious total commitment for teenage athletes

Evidence

You train for three hours every day and are required to give the sport your total concentration. You are always learning how to prepare for victory and to profit from your defeats. Most important, you have to discipline yourself away from all your bad habits. Later Rami will tell me that football is like Islam, a total way of life. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 824

Categorization

• SEED: The football-as-religion claim is a thread worth following: varsity athletics as functional religious practice for immigrant teens, pre-dating and later fusing with actual Islamic observance.