Still nursing World Cup blues? Maybe Safwat’s shot at Wimbledon will help clear it up: Egyptian tennis player Mohamed Safwat could qualify for Wimbledon if he wins a match today against American Michael Mmoh, according to Sport360. Qualifying would make Safwat the first Egyptian to play in the championship since 1980. “While Egypt’s first World Cup appearance since Ismail El Shafei in 1990 ended in heartbreak, Safwat has an opportunity to give his country reason to celebrate.” Safwat says to have cracked the code which had plagued the Egyptian national team at the World Cup: “Keep your head down, stay hungry, don’t expect too much but always aim for more.” Safwat became the first Egyptian in 22 years to play a Grand Slam after earning a last-minute spot in the French Open last month.

It is the expectation, he feels, that kept Egypt down on its luck in football. “My thought is that people were expecting too much from them, there was too much pressure on them. I heard there were scores of celebrities going to their hotel the night before the matches, that’s too much pressure for a player, especially that they qualified for the first time in 28 years.”

Random things this morning that we thought you should know:

• GE’s spin-off is accelerating as it sheds businesses many of you here in Cairo will know well, including its healthcare unit and its investment in oil services outfit Baker Hughes. (FT | WSJ)
• Former New York Times Cairo bureau chief David Kirkpatrick’s book on Egypt and the so-called Arab Spring is due out the first week of August. The title: Into the Hands of the Soldiers. Some of you love David, some of you … don’t. Pre-order your copy of the book, take your BP meds the night before you open it, and start reading. It’s going to be the talk of the town for a day or two either way, so you may as well judge first hand.
• This tweetstorm is a perfect introduction to what’s really happening in Iran on the economic front.It’s doubly relevant as the Trump administration threatens sanctions against any nation that doesn’t take its imports of Iranian oil to zero by 4 November.

We’re out of touch with what it means to live in the US (even if we’re not Lindsay-Lohan-out-of-touch — who, by the way, now lives in Dubai), but we still have a soft spot for cultural icons such as the storied reporter Andrea Mitchell. InStyle isn’t usually on our reading menu, but the early risers and coffee addicts among us loved 16 Espressos and a 5 a.m. Call Time: A Day In The Life of NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Rather awesome for a professional in her 70s who has to live with Alan Greenspan.

We’re heading into a three-day weekend: Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly declared this Sunday a national holiday substituting for 30 June, which falls on Saturday, according to a Cabinet statement. Enterprise will be off, and back in your inboxes on Monday morning at the appointed hour.