Federations, Ministries, Rabat oh my!

For those with even a small familiarity of the way ministries and federations work here in Morocco, then the read below will be enjoyable. This comes from Lisa Matuska, foreign women's football correspondent extraordinaire on her attempt to get even the slightest amount of information from the Moroccan Women's Football Committee. I will leave out names but no one knows who is in the committee anyway, not even those involved in Women's football in Morocco so it doesn't matter too much either way. Enjoy!


Federation interview

Rabat Morocco

Royal Moroccan Football Federation Building, 3rd floor



We entered into a meeting with seven people. I explained I was a university student doing a project on women’s football which I began in 2008 in Oak Brook Chicago and now I was working with a radio station in Chicago to continue this project on womens’ football in Morocco, profiling some girls that came back from Oak Brook and the teams they play on here in Morocco, as well as the status of women’s football in Morocco.

I put my recorder on which they said was fine, then I asked when the league began. They were confused at what I wanted and unsure of the exact dates. When I said that a general date was OK they said they need to do research to get an exact date because this must be official word from the federation. Someone left the room and then brought a piece of paper that I assumed had the correct information. This man read the paper and said, “oh this says 1998 but I’m sure it was before that.”

I then asked a more general, opinion-based question: “has the league grown since it started?” I assumed this answer, like most answer if something has grown from it’s first year would be yes, of course, we don’t have the exact numbers but blah blah blah. This sent another whirlwind of confusion, stemmed from one man, about exact numbers and official word and they can’t tell me anything. I should send my questions by email and they can get together and put together official answers and then set up a meeting and get back to me.

My last question, which was my last ditch effort, was, “what are the challenges the federation faces regarding women’s football in Morocco,” and of course, once again, Imane and I didn’t understand, they can’t answer, it must be official. As if their titles were not official enough, maybe they needed a stamp or something.


It seems they don’t meet often so this was a long working meeting and I understand we might have been a bit of an intrusion. However, I don’t see anything wrong in answering in general and then sending details later, or I don’t see anything wrong in one person coming out with me and doing a one-on-one interview because I did emphasize the unimportance of this piece of my project, just a few words about women’s football from the federation. But it seemed that the women, who were the friendliest weren’t in control of what would happen and this one man, took over and didn’t think anyone knew the answers so they would all have to confer and get back to me. It seemed as if they didn’t work together much and communication between them was very disorganized as well.