Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Spirit of Football, Spirit of Sidi Moumen



It has been a while since I updated but just wanted to share (since they have updated their blog with their visit) a special visit Sunday, February 21, by Andrew and Chris from Spirit of Football.

Their project is pretty amazing, check out their blog at http://theball.tv.

They are basically traveling from England to South Africa for the World Cup, through Africa, with one ball. It serves as sort of a torch, and everyone along the way has the opportunity to sign it. They stayed a couple of days in Casa and Zaki, a friend a technical director at Wydad, hosted them here. They came to Sidi Moumen and we organized some drills, got the Tacharouk football club kids to come as well. All the kids were able to sign the ball which was great. Andrew and Chris also visited L'Heure Joyeuse, another great association that works with street kids in Casa. They have a dancing shantytown program where kids from slums learn break dancing and hip hop dancing, sponsored/funded by Nike I believe. We wish Chris and Andrew luck as they head south. Check out their blog as well, you can follow their journey to South Africa. The idea of everyone signing this ball is great because no matter who you are, from famous players to street kids, everyone signs with the same markers on top of eachother and all the signatures at one point fade as the ball is kicked and handled. It is such a temporary thing, a moment that everyone participated in, in exactly the same way fundamentally but uniquely at the same time (if that makes any sense). One way is not more important or more unique than the other. And that is what football is essentially, fundamentally the same game around the world played by millions of professional and non professionals. The same game, taken and made their own, played in an utterly unique way. Millions of moments that are the same but not. Okay, I am done.