“The best-known story about Salah is that as a kid he had to travel by bus for nine hours round trip every day to get to training. This is also true. He learned to play the Egyptian way, on the streets, scrapping it out in the local youth leagues around Nagrig until he was scouted at 13 by Al Mokawloon, a team in Egypt’s top division. Al Mokawloon, which Salah refers to by its English name, Arab Contractors, is based in Nasr City, a suburb of Cairo 82 miles south of Salah’s hometown.
So every morning Salah would go to school at 7 a.m., then leave after two hours (the club gave him a permission slip) and walk a mile past jasmine fields to a bus stop. There he boarded a microbus — a camper van crammed with three or even four rows of seats — to nearby Basyoun. From Basyoun he’d catch another to Tanta; from Tanta to Cairo’s bustling Ramses Square; and finally a fourth to the training ground in Nasr City.
“Half an hour, one hour, then two hours, then maybe half an hour or 45 minutes for the last one,” Salah says, ticking off the transfers from memory. Training itself lasted only a couple of hours, but Salah would try to turn up early and stay late, starting the long journey home around 6 p.m.
At the time, Al Mokawloon was paying him a monthly salary of 125 EGP — roughly $20 — which didn’t even cover bus fare for a week, so his father, who owned a jasmine trading business, covered the rest.”
Source: GQ