Sports
Middle East Best Sports Performance of Last Year
Every year, we see so much growth and potential in Middle Eastern sports. Despite the fact that many events in the UAE were cancelled due to the pandemic, Arab athletes have proven to be among the best in a variety of sports, including football, swimming, running, taekwondo, and others.
Female athletes have also made their countries proud by winning medals and making an impact with their stellar performance, so the field is not limited to male athletes only.
In this article, we will talk about the top Arab players and their performance in 2021. Let’s get started!
Mohamed Salah
Mohamed Salah has been crowned as the most important Arab athlete of 2021 by Hashem Ali of Arabicbet.org. He is an Egyptian professional footballer who plays for the club Liverpool as a forward and captain of the Egyptian National Team. He had an amazing year in 2021 and proved himself yet again as the best Arab footballer of his time. He scored 40 goals and 16 assists for his club and scored 100 goals total in 2021. He also helped his national team reach the final stage of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.
He started his senior career in 2010 and is one of the most highly paid Egyptian players of all time. He was also named the CAF African Footballer of the Year in 2017 and 2018. In 2022, Salah is hoping to win another Champions League and create an impact in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Rababe Arafi
Rababe Arafi is a Moroccan middle-distance runner that specializes in 1500 meters. She holds the Moroccan national record in the mile run. She started her international career in 2007 and has represented Morocco in World Championships in Athletics in 2013, 2015, and 2017.
She is a three-time medalist in the African Championships in Athletics and is one of the top Arab players and female athletes. She also competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and placed fifth in the 1500 meters race.
Achraf Hakimi
Achraf Hakimi is a professional footballer and one of the best Middle East sports performers in 2021. He plays for Morocco’s national team and also as a right wing-back for Paris Saint-Germain. Achraf Hakimi started his football career by joining Real Madrid’s youth setup in 2006 and made his debut in the team at the first match of the 2016 International Champions Cup. He scored his first goal in La-Liga in a win against Sevilla.
In 2021, he scored 3 goals and 3 assists for his new club and 2 goals, and 1 assist for his country’s national team. He is considered one of the best attacking full-backs in the world.
Riyad Mahrez
Riyad Mahrez is another professional Arab footballer who plays for Manchester City as a winger and is also the captain of Algeria’s national team. He started his professional career as a youth player for French Club AAS Sarcelles. He switched many teams before signing up for Leicester City, where he helped them win the Championship.
He joined Manchester City in 2018 and won the Premier League, EFL, and FA Cup in his first season. He was also named the CAF’s African Footballer of the Year in 2016. In 2021, he was shortlisted for the Ballon d’Or and GOAL50 because of his phenomenal performance the previous year with 28 goals and 16 assists and helping his team reach the Champions Premier League.
Hedaya Malak
Hedaya Malak is an Egyptian taekwondo practitioner. She started at the age of 6 and won Egypt’s Championship when she was 14. She participated in the 2012 London Olympics and reached the quarterfinals. She also participated in the 2016 Rio Olympics and won the bronze medal by defeating Raheleh Asemani.
She also represented Egypt in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and won the women’s 67kg taekwondo’s bronze-medal event. She is the only female athlete to win two medals in two consecutive Olympics.
Besides these, many other amazing male and female Arab athletes have significantly contributed to the sports world. New talent is also emerging every year, and we hope to see more phenomenal performances from our top and favorite players in 2022. We hope this article helped!
Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum
Alberta Sports Hall of Fame 2025 Inductee profiles – Alpine Skiing Athlete – Brady Leman

Brady Leman – Alpine Skiing Athlete
Calgary native Brady Leman, born October 16, 1986, is celebrated as one of Canada’s most successful ski cross athletes. Overcoming a broken leg at the 2010 Olympics and a near-podium finish in 2014, Brady achieved gold in men’s ski cross at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
With 6 World Cup victories and 32 podiums, he retired in 2023 after winning his final race on Canadian soil.
Beyond his athletic achievements, Brady actively supports future athletes through fundraising and leadership roles, including serving on the Alberta Alpine Ski Association Board. His induction honors his remarkable career and contributions to Canadian skiing.
Bruce Dowbiggin
What Connor Should Say To Oilers: It’s Not You. It’s Me.

This just in. Connor McDavid is on track to be the greatest hockey player ever. Apologies to the Gretz/ Orr/ Howe partisans. But if he stays healthy and gets the hell out of Edmonton he will be hands-down the best ever. He is equal measures of Gretzky’s intuitive genius, Orr’s 200-foot impact. Howe’s sandpaper attitude. It’s an honour to watch him.
We know, we know, if he is so great why couldn’t he get the Oilers over the hump, particularly the past two seasons against Florida? Gretz, Orr, Howe all won Stanley Cups while leading their teams. So did Mario Lemieux. Fair point. But Howe in his prime never played more than two series in the postseason. Orr often played just three. Gretz teams often bagelled opponents for years.
McDavid’s teams the last two years have had lengthy paths to tred. Just getting to a Final is a huge accomplishment. Repeating that feat (going seven then six games) in the Final is humungous. It’s exhausting, mentally and physically. That’s why so few teams do it.
Still, that’s not the point. We have been asking since 2018 how long McDavid will hobble his legacy by staying in Edmonton. Those early columns were talking about a team that missed playoffs or did a Maple Leafs fold early on. The current iteration of the Oilers has gotten to the brink. They have players who’ve been around a while. And fell short.

Now the Oilers are an old team, the oldest in the regular season, the oldest team in the playoffs this year. Teams carrying more than two plus-30 players have a miserable track record of winning Cups. And the Oilers have zero Grade A prospects in the pipeline. At 28, McDavid is a young guy on their roster. Not good.
As the hockey world knows he can sign an extension on July 1 to follow the contract he has now. Money will be no object as the NHL salary cap (finally) goes up. Term will be forever if he wants it. His running mate Leon Draisaitl is tied up till age 36. The Oilers desperately want him to stay after the Gretzky fiasco in 1988. So what is he going to do? He’s got national endorsements in Canada, but in the U.S.? Connor who? The sky is the limit.
Oilers fans palpitating over the future of their star were looking for hints as to his mindset when he met the media following the Oilers loss in six games to Florida. It was a chance for him to say he’s staying, he loves the place, his wife is committed to freezing every winter in the Alberta capital. He could have cried and said “Mess told me not to do that”.
What they got was a lot of maybe. Yes, he kept the doors open, but he said he needs time to see the landscape till the clock tolls on July 1. He needs to examine whether this veteran team has a future. Because in a few years they’ll be like Howe’s Detroit teams in the 60s, a played-out dynasty.
Under NHL rules no team can contact him about signing. But he will know that everyone will want him at a max deal. Some will offer no state income tax. Some will have teams on the cusp of the Cup he desires (see Matthew Tkachuk to Florida in 2023). Some will be giant U.S. media cities with the ability to make him what Gretzky became in L.A. Some will offer warm weather and anonymity away from the rink.
These are all knowns. For the impatient, teams can approach the Oilers now about a trade. So he’s holding all the cards. It’s prom night and he gets his pick. Unless Edmonton (gulp) jumps the gun on a trade.

Let’s play Peter Pocklington for a minute here and see this from the Oilers’ POV. Pocklington traded Gretzky, because Peter was broke. That’s not Darryl Katz’s problem. His problem is his team is about to get ancient. There is no McDavid for Draisaitl on the horizon. Plus, you’ve tied up several players (Nurse, Nugent Hopkins) to contracts they can’t hope to play up to. And youngish players coming into free agency.
He must address the other side of the 1988 Gretzky equation. How to get full market value for a superstar? Which means getting another star to help Draisaitl going forward. You could let the two play out the string together in Edmonton, of course. But with so many strong teams in Colorado, Vegas, Dallas, even Winnipeg that would be a hard slog. And by the time you realized that it would be too late.
The smart play, as Michael Corleone would say, is move fast. Trade McDavid before the start of next season for a boatload of young players to supplement Draisaitl. Take a short-term PR hit but live to compete another day.
Of course, Katz is not going to trade McDavid. He’s a fanboy owner. He’ll throw the Rexall kitchen sink at him and hope that’s enough. McDavid will be patient (if he’s smart). The “will-he-sign?” drama will bleed into the next season, a millstone for the team. The distractions will mount before Edmonton realizes that an unsigned McDavid is a liability. And Connor on a max deal with a minus team is no bargain either.
Remember the re-structured Oilers won a Cup in 1990 using Mark Messier and the players they got for Gretzky. Think about it, Edmonton.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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