Ahmed Rehab is an avid football (soccer) fan. Ahmed was born in Egypt and grew up watching African greats like local legend Mahmoud Al Khateeb, Liberian George Weah, Cameroonian Roger Milla, Nigerian Rashidi Yekini, and Algerian Rabah Madjer. Ahmed spent a good portion of his childhood in Manchester, England where he became a lifelong fan of Manchester United, long before it metamorphed into the glamorous winning club that it became in the 1990's under the visionary stewardship of sir Alex Ferguson.

Ahmed is an ardent fan of Zinedine Zidane and is the founder of the internet's most visited Zidane fan site, the now defunct ZidaneZone.com, launched orginally as ZidaneWeb.com.

Ahmed is a fan of Les Bleus and counts the 1998 final in which France won the world cup, thanks to a Zidane brace, as his fondest moment in sports history, second only to Manchester United's last gasp win against Bayern Munich in the UEFA Champions League final of 1999, a glorious year known to Man U fans as the year of the Treble.

Ahmed's most torturous sporting moment is the Zidane header in the final of the 2006 World Cup that was barely deflected by Buffon and the subsequent dismissal of Zidane due to a head butt on Materazzi. Ahmed has spent countless nights fantasizing about what would have been had Zidane's header gone in. Ahmed to this day cannot bear to watch footage of that header or the dismissal. He wrote a column about the reasons behind Zidane's headbutt for the Chicago Tribune, an excercise he called a "personal coping mechanism."

Ahmed pays a ridiculous fee for a cable package he orders only to be able to watch the English Premiere League which he follows religiously on his bought-for-football HD screen as well as the internet.

Ahmed, a US citizen living in Chicago since 1992, loathes the fact that "soccer" is a secondary sport in the US that does not enjoy the same respect as the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, or even Golf. If he could do anything to change that - including bribing every American to "snap out of it and see the light" - he would.

Ahmed plays for a local Chicago soccer outfit called CC United and previously played for AC Sphinx, also a local Chicago team. In 2008, he played a match in an interfaith community team against a team composed of Members of the Scottish Parliament in Glasgow, Scotland. They lost 4-3.

Ahmed who writes for the Huffington Post is an established writer and public speaker who has been published and interviewed several hundred times by media like the Chicago Tribune, Reuters, CNN, FOX, ABC, BBC, NPR, etc., albeit in a slightly different capacity from his passion for football: civil rights. Ahmed happens to be the Executive Director of a major civil rights organization in Chicago.

Ahmed's website is at: www.ahmedrehab.com