A touch gone awry...

Not all criticism is bad. When someone makes fun of your touch on the ball it could be a good thing, at least for girls in Morocco.

This past Saturday, I was again in Sidi Moumen watching a girls league team (Nassim) practice at the local district field usually dominated by men. As they played, groups of older boys who just finished practice leaned against the gate, faces pressed through the bars staring. They started making comments such as "what kind of touch on the ball is that" and "hey, did you see her control, she has no idea how to control the ball, even on flat land." My first reaction was annoyance. Let the girls be, I thought. Arrogant punks. But then I realized that perhaps these comments they were making was progress. They reflected a new level of respect. No longer were the boys commenting on the girls themselves as they had in the past (calling them dirty, saying they look like boys, or they are prostitutes or that girls shouldn't play football). Now, the comments reflected criticism of their game, something all players do to other players, be it male or female. The key to this was that they saw these girls as players. Don't get me wrong, they were probably still arrogant punks but at least, from my point of view, they respected the girls enough to comment on their game and not on them.

Rainy days are good days in Sidi Moumen

Why? Well, the boys stay away and the girls come to play. Like I mentioned before, every Sunday I go to the Sidi Moumen Youth Culture Center where I run their sports program. The center is located in one of Morocco's biggest sprawling slums/low income neighborhood, infamous for being the home to many of Morocco's suicide bombers. We offer kids Lacrosse, field hockey, basketball and football. Today, the normal 150 kids did now show up because of heavy rains in the morning. On my way in bus number 17 (as Lisa and I read aloud to each other an old Harper's magazine article on the state of education in America and old men kept saying hello to Lisa because she has become something of a regular on this particular bus) I wondered if we would find any kids at the center today. They tend to stay away when the weather gets bad.

We arrive today and surprisingly I find all the girls who come to play football inside, waiting and about a handful of boys who probably just followed their sisters. It made me realize how far they have come from when we first started, half interested in football, not taking anything seriously, sometimes coming and other times not. The attendance has been pretty steady now for three months and playing with them today, I could also see an improvement in their game. Not that this is my main goal but it is nice to see they are learning more about the game. What makes me the proudest is that they are dedicated and are starting to respect each other more and their coaches more, especially when Amal (my go to women's football coach who comes to help Sunday mornings) is there. She is this great athlete who grew up playing football and now coaches a local Sidi Moumen team and has been a part of many camps and trainings that either I held or the US embassy or the British Council. The girls really like her and she does a great job with them. They have learned to respect her as well as me. Last week, Amal couldn't come so it was just me and the girls were pretty out of control, not listening, fighting among themselves, refusing to play if another girl was on their team. Nothing I could say was doing anything and so I finally told them to go home, that football was done for the day and they could tell me why next Sunday. Today, one of the girls came up to me and apologized, recognizing that they were out of control. I can't describe how great it was to feel that. Most of the time you think they have no idea how they are acting.

Regardless, we did some great warm up drills, boys weren't in our way trying to take our balls and kick them as far away as possible into the empty lots full of used hypodermic needles and it didn't rain again until we finished and were inside.

Oujda part jouj

The trip, like I said, was very informative and revealing of what football still means and is in small border towns across from Algeria. Oujda, before Morocco closed the border with Algeria in 1994, was a bustling and important gate to the desert but now, it is the end of the line. It is where the train stops, where the bus route ends, where things begin to stand still. Appropriately, women's football is no different. I met with a team, the team, over the weekend. They are mostly friends from their local high school and have been gathered and organized by an enthusiastic PE coach (male). Several of the girls attended the camp in Bouznika as well as my camp this past summer. Several of the girls, great players, travel to Casablanca on weekends, making that 10 hour trip, just to play with a team here. There is nothing for them in Oujda. They want to joint the national league but to do that they need to play at least three other teams in the region, in order to officially be able to play in the national championship. Three other teams no problem right? They are the only team in the region, that is where the problem lies. So they are stuck, with no money to travel and improve their game against teams in other cities and no ability to play within the national Moroccan framework because of bureaucratic obstacles.

They recently approached the local men's team, an actually very good and historical club in Morocco called Mouloudiya. The team's manager said they will take the team, incorporate them into the club and that is where the conversation ended. I met with the club's managing team and was basically asked by them for a new field for the girls because there is not enough field space for everyone. Everyone, they mean the two other boys teams that play. Fortunately I don't have the ability to build fields for cities so hopefully this team will figure out how to "squeeze" the girls in.

The ideas toward women's football in Oujda is still a bit conservative. It is true too that they are just far from the metropoles of Morocco, such as Casablanca and Rabat, where many more advances in the game and many more opportunities exist. However, I think the discussion is too focused on what is lacking and not focused enough on what can be done with what there is because of the hesitation in ceding that space and attention to the women from the men. The dialogue is still dominated by men, who know best. It was extremely refreshing to speak with the manager of Mouloudiya, who was a woman, because she was literally in a man's world. She was this really dynamic woman, master's in Sports Management and there on her merit rather than because she was a big former footballer with the club. That in and of itself gives me some hope that the club's perspective is headed in the right direction because they would hire someone like that in the first place.

I realized in the end that my contribution or help is very limited. My capabilities allow me to bring some attention to Oujda, create some buzz through camps and US women's teams touring through the area but that is it. Perhaps that is enough. Part of the problem I find sometimes is people making the first step. However, if you make it, then there is no shortage of people to help or no shortage of those who think it is a great idea.

First step in Oujda is to create a camp in March. Then, bring the girls' football team in the summer. Then, we will see who jumps on board.