The Revolution of 1952 has been presented as a turning point for Egypt not only politically, but also in the cultural realm. In the early years of the new Egyptian Republic, however, the government could neither carelessly nor completely discard the cultural channels of the British occupiers, as these were the very structures that had been coopted to support nationalist aims. In particular, sport and its concomitant discourse had played a critical role in allowing the ideas of intellectuals to be presented in an accessible manner and engage a broader selection of the population. The post-Revolutionary state, therefore, had to delineate a cohesive sport policy to maintain and build support for the regime. I argue that, in the early years of the Revolution, the discourse engendered by this policy was supported by the traditional frameworks against which the movement rallied, underneath a façade of superficial transformations. There was, therefore, more continuity than discontinuity between British and post-revolutionary policy, as well as continued efforts to work with international sporting bodies. It was not until the 1956 Suez Crisis that a shift occurred in which the Egyptian government abandoned its attempts to become one among the club of Europeans, instead seeking a leadership role in the Arab World. During the British occupation, the key strength of sporting discourse was its multifarious nature, giving more people the ability to construct their own narratives and adapt what sport could accomplish to changing circumstances. The post-1956 direct use of sport as a government-sponsored tool for nation-building, however, not only restricted what these narratives could say, but also rejected the heritage of the pre-revolutionary era by devaluing it as a foreign imposition. With Egypt’s past sporting victories and heroes denied a prominent place, if any at all, in the nation’s collective consciousness, the idea of sport as an adaptable, transformative tool was forgotten. Instead, in the years following the Revolution, sport came to be seen as another government directive, one that could be engaged as a binary, by either accepting or rejecting its message.