Football Season Is Underway, and These Arab–American Superfans Are All In
By Ragad Ahmad
September 22, 2025
In the Philadelphia Eagles' front office, Ameena Soliman crunches player stats and coordinates scouting reports as the team's director of football operations and pro scout. The Yardley native has spent eight seasons helping build the team that crushed Kansas City 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX last February. As a Palestinian American, Soliman may seem like an anomaly, but she is hardly alone in her passion for football. Across Philadelphia, Arab Americans are among the biggest fans of the country’s favorite sport.
"Football culture fits Egyptian culture perfectly," says Fathi Ahmed, a 24-year-old Egyptian-American investment banker. "The hospitality, the gathering, the way everyone crowds around food and argues about everything—it's basically a typical Egyptian celebration."
Fathi Ahmed, left, wears his Saquon Barkley Giants jersey alongside a friend wearing a Barkley Eagles jersey. Photo courtesy of Fathi Ahmed
Every Sunday night, Ahmed commits what locals consider football treason. From his Doylestown living room, deep in Eagles territory, he roots for the Giants with the kind of blind devotion that none of his friends can understand. For him, it is a matter of loyalty to his hometown, New York City. This season brings particular heartache—Ahmed still wears his #26 Giants jersey for Saquon Barkley, who left the Giants and signed on to the Eagles in March 2024.
"It's bittersweet wearing this jersey now," Ahmed says, "and watching one of my favorite players play for our biggest rival."
Ahmed’s football awakening came in 2015, when he was introduced to the video game Madden NFL 15 as a teenager. Today, it’s fantasy football that feeds his love of friendly competition. "I look forward to the bragging rights when I win," Ahmed says.
Dr. Amir Alkader, a 35-year-old anesthesiologist from Delaware County, dates his fandom even further back. When he was nine, his Palestinian mom bought him a Green Bay Packers sweater. Young Alkader had no clue what the Packers were, so he did what any curious 90’s kid would do and looked it up on Yahoo.
“From that point, I started watching games and playing the sport with my classmates during recess,” he says.
Khaled Heba, center, at an Eagles watch party with friends. Photo courtesy of Khaled Heba
Like Ahmed, Alkader joined a fantasy football league at age 15. "[It] is what really cemented my passion for football," he says. The weekly trash talk, the draft parties, and the season-long battles are something he looks forward to every fall and winter.
When Alkader relocated from New Jersey to Philadelphia in 2019, switching from Green Bay to the Eagles felt natural. Philadelphia’s deep football culture and the Eagles’ crazed fanbase quickly drew him in. ‘When in Rome,’ he figured—though in this case, it was more like ‘When in the city that will riot whether their team wins or loses.’
Khaled Heba’s football journey — unlike Ahmed’s and Alkader’s — involved actual tackles and touchdowns. The 29-year-old Palestinian-Egyptian financial consultant played linebacker as a freshman at Robbinsville High School in New Jersey. He inherited his loyalty to the Giants from his older brother, an allegiance that has survived a move to Philadelphia and a marriage to Palestinian woman whom he describes as "a raging Eagles fan."
Amir Alkader gears up to watch an Eagles game in his #26 jersey. Photo courtesy of Amir Alkader
Sometimes, the couple puts their differences aside to host watch parties that double as fundraisers for Palestine. But most of the time, their household rivalry during football season resembles a sitcom. Heba tried converting his wife, Natalie, to Giants fandom when they first met, and she laughed in his face, he says. Five years later, with a baby on the way, he's already planning their child's Giants indoctrination. Natalie, meanwhile, enjoys pointing out that her team “actually wins games.”
"Because the Giants have been so bad, she gets the last laugh all the time," Heba admits with the resigned tone of someone who supports the wrong New York team.
With the new football season underway, Ahmed is gearing up for friendly tension between with his diehard Eagles crew, Alkader enters year 21 with the same fantasy league, and Heba prepares to welcome his firstborn with a tiny Giants’ jersey.
“All I have left to say,” Alkader reflects, “is GO BIRDS.”
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Ragad Ahmad is a Palestinian–American Muslim born and raised in Philadelphia. She currently studies Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College, where she explores issues of decolonization and climate justice.
Al-Bustan News is made possible by a grant from Independence Public Media Foundation.