Something striking happens at major global events — World Cup competitions, international film festivals, concerts staged by legendary singers on their world tours, film screenings at cinemas across the planet, and international awards granted to creative talents in every field. What takes place on the stages, platforms, and pitches of these events is a genuine test for the most gifted and accomplished people in their fields and their countries, from footballers to cinema actors. Unless an artist, player, or singer has been tested before a global audience, there is simply no justification for speaking of them as the genius of their age or the undisputed leader of their craft.
Why do we say this? Because the current 2026 World Cup has exposed many illusions we live with as peoples and audiences — illusions fed to us by Arab media, which markets certain faces and names as world-class and international, the best ever seen, the greatest ever heard, the most storied, the most celebrated, and so on. While peddling these faces and names, the same media never forgets to attach titles carefully chosen for their psychological effect on Arab audiences, who are by nature and formation emotionally predisposed to believe that so-and-so is the Lady of the Stage, and such-and-such is the Lady of Radio, and another is the Master of the Microphone and of Cinema, and on and on.
These titles, which circulate freely in artistic and footballing circles, are in the end nothing more than ideas that flashed unbidden into someone's mind, were coined and spread, and over time hardened into a kind of constraint — one that prevents people from criticising the art of this so-called "great" or from openly admitting they are not impressed by that so-called "great woman." Yet these figures have never passed through any test before global audiences, neither in international competitions nor at international festivals nor anywhere else. They are simply the product of the marketing and hype machines in their own countries and their own media. This places us squarely in the dilemma of criticism and the expression of opinion, when we are afraid to state our views on them for fear of being accused of hostility toward Arab art or national genius.
Today, as a reader, you cannot doubt the literary genius of Naguib Mahfouz or Gabriel García Márquez. As a cinema enthusiast, you know full well the artistic stature of Omar Sharif, or of Anthony Hopkins or Meryl Streep, for instance. The same holds true for Maradona, Pelé, Messi, Cristiano, Neymar, and thousands of other world-class players. These individuals are not world-class geniuses because their media called them so, but because they were tested before the collective taste of audiences everywhere in the world — at international festivals, in cinemas in every corner of the globe, and on the pitches of international competition. That is precisely why so many people prefer to follow everything that is truly global: because it has been proven through worldwide audience credibility, not through the methods of local propaganda.