Presto, Instant Playground

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/presto-instant-playground.html

Opinion
Presto, Instant Playground
By ALEC APPELBAUM
Published: August 13, 2011
Can a trendy retail tactic promote healthier living in low-income urban neighborhoods?


Interesting idea from several New York neighborhood associations. They temporarily close neighborhood streets and create "pop up" playgrounds with different sports for the local communities. They have their arguments on how these temporary playgrounds might motivate children and parents to get out of the house and exercise once the street is reopened. Although I could see it having some impact, I find myself wishing for a more sustainable permanent approach. It is easy to get caught up in the excitement and get out and play when enthusiastic 20 somethings are showing your kid how to play tennis on a mini tennis net in the middle of a normally busy street. When its gone though, it is just as easy to stay home and play the wii.

On Real vs Barca and other collective activities

Simple enough question, there is never a gray area. One of the few things in life that is black and white. Yes, no, or neither (the last response very rare and usually reserved for those completely not interested in football, or don't want to fight). Unfortunately, in the second of what I believe will be 5 matches against each other, Barca lost 1-0, heartbreaking, in overtime. I was in a new cafe on Biranzarane, and liked it.

The place was split in half regarding allegiances and they (mostly boys and men) brought their own flags! It was almost like there were two bodies, and at each missed goal, great pass, corner, breakaway, there was a collective ahhhh that would erupt, or a collective sigh of relief that would escape depending on the team. When Real scored, you didn't hear any individual screams or sounds, but a loud single roar, not just from our cafe but from across the street, across town, across the country.

The only other thing that can emotes such a roar...a Wydad and Raja game (although I would have hoped the promise of constitutional change would do the same thing, I think that time has yet to come).


There is always retour and I can only hope this time I take part in the collective roar and not the collective sulking out the cafe towards your car.

A stadium

They call it Casablancaise, it sits between Centre Ville and Maarif in one of the few green parks that Casablanca can claim to have. The stadium is full of trash, sports a dirt 300 m track and reminds me of what urban degradation would look like if done by American Eagle. Remember those sweatshirts you could buy, when you were 14, from any of those stores (insert name like Halister, Abercrombie and Fitch etc)? They would be a navy or maroon faded color, with strategically placed holes and shredded ends, as if the entire garment had been rubbed on coarse cement. Then the words Physical Education sewn on the front or back. This is what the stadium looks like now. A photo shoot waiting to take place.

It wouldn't be that depressing if you didn't know what Casablancaise used to be. I have heard stories, of championship African track and field events, full stands, crowd screaming, award ceremonies and medal distributions. It was were many of Morocco's most famous track and field athletes (men and women) started their careers as teenagers. Strangely enough, despite it being forgotten by government and private sectors alike, it is still used. It is free to use and at any moment during the day, you see an incredible cross section of Moroccan society training there. Women wearing the hijab or full niqab, young boys and girls training for a team, old men and women stretching...I could keep going.

This blog entry will start a small series on this stadium, its past and its future. I am currently trying to do a radio documentary on the story behind the area and hopefully try to get enough people to mobilize and get the government to revive it. Partly because I like the ambiance there and think it is truly a very special place and partly because I am tired of seeing Lady Fitness everywhere.

Headscarves, again

Not sure if anyone has been following this controversy but Fifa just won't leave this alone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/14/AR2010081401219.html


Personally I think Sepp Blatter sounds like an idiot and those who ruled that the hijab was not only dangerous during play but also unacceptable because it made a political and religious statement are making a very powerful statement as well: because a woman happens to be born in a Muslim country or to a Muslim family or converts and chooses to wear the hijab for personal reasons or must wear it because of political reasons cannot participate in a sport on the international level. Should we start fining players every time they make the sign of the cross when enter the field or score a goal?

Our friend Sepp said it best, that, "It is very important for football, that football be played by and in all cultures. Especially at this level of the youths, and the Olympic idea, I think it's very important."

According to FIFA, the best way to do this is by making restrictions.

What I did find interesting is that FIFA allowed them to wear these "caps" or what looks like a winter beanie. It in a way put these women in uncharted territory, trying to negotiate between the demands of FIFA and the Islamic codes of Iran, or rather in this case, what constitutes a hijab in Islam. I'm sure that was a controversial topic, case and point when the Iranian woman, Marzieh Akbarabadi, who is in charge of all women's sports, marched off the field at the unveiling of the new "caps" in protest.

Again it is funny to follow FIFA's reasoning in all of this. Wearing a hijab is making a religious/political statement as well as poses a danger to the player or another player but as soon as you uncover the neck, the danger disappears and the players no longer are visually Muslim.

In the end, you have these girls who want to play and most likely don't care much about the politics around it all. Whatever your personal thoughts are on the hijab, the victims here are these young players who are good enough to play, want to play, and can't for absolutely no reason, pure discrimination and against every Olympic and fair play principles which actually, I have realized, are rarely ever present in any sort of Olympic event or FIFA sponsored event anyway.

Guest Post by Lisa Matuska: If only cars had no horns

Playing a pick up soccer (football) game in Morocco is like entering into a contract. I didn’t realize this the first time I was in Rabat with my sister and we saw some guys playing on the beach. We had an hour or so until we were suppose to meet some people for dinner so I said, “let’s kick the ball around.” Nicole being the eager-to-please hostess, knew very well those words, “kick the ball around” didn’t exist in the football-loving country, but we played anyway.

Three hours later, my feet bruised and my toes bloody, we stopped because someone was hurt badly enough that he couldn’t walk. So this is a pick up game. You arrive at the beach, kick the ball and linger until you identify some opponents (prey you could say, depending upon how serious you are) and give a quick whistle or indication you want to play. There’s lots of negotiations and arguing about numbers, goal size and other things that I can’t understand due to language barriers, so I usually just wait.

And wait. And wait.

And that brings me to the beauty of this game: one can play in a football match no matter what language they speak- even sign language.

On a chilly and overcast Monday morning, the beach in Casablanca, which is usually filled with footballers, was empty except for a few scattered groups. My friends and I started kicking the ball around and soon my friend Mehdi began match negotiations with a group of guys nearby.

Again, I just waited.

He came back and said, “they don’t speak.” I thought he meant that they were shy, but when we started the game there was something wrong, something missing. Noise. It was a quiet Monday and a quiet game of football. The men we were playing against were all deaf. At first I felt as if we were playing a different game. There was no yelling, no calling for the ball. Everyone on our team could of course speak, but for some reason we followed suit and stayed mostly silent. I thought I was in another world for a while, a silent film perhaps. But about a half hour into the game, people started to push and shove and whine, and I realized that I was actually just playing football in Morocco. The arguments, outrage and debates that dominate every other game were happening here, only with dramatic hand gestures and theatrical reenactments of fouls and bad passes. If someone knocked you down, instead of crying foul from the ground, you had to get up and run in front of them, pointing to the very spot of sand on your leg that somehow represents concrete and undeniable evidence of the foul. And if they disagree well then, you reenact the play, waving your hands wildly. Whoever gets tired and frustrated of these charades loses, and the other gets the ball. In a way it was the only time I could understand what these arguments in Moroccan pick up games were all about. There was no more language barrier.

Even though the group of men couldn’t communicate with their words, they were very good. Their passes were quick, intuitive and difficult to read. They had a different vision of the field, one that replaced the oral communication we use when we play. I could also tell that they played together a lot, like a team, not just a mash up of random talented players. Often times during the game they would talk and argue amongst each other in very dramatic sign language, and my Moroccan team members would look at them like, “what on earth are they arguing about?” Now they knew how I felt, and so while they silently argued we did the only thing we could do- went back toward our own goal and waited.

-Lisa Matuska

Bethesda SC Morocco Tour, 2010

Back again, just finished a really great program sponsored by the US Embassy. I brought over a US girls mixed U-15,16,17 team from Bethesda Maryland (Bethesda Soccer Club, http://www.bethesdasoccer.org/) and we did a huge tour around Morocco. It was a mix of tournaments, games and clinics as well as a round table discussion and a somewhat interesting press conference.

The goal of the program (officially) was to provide an exchange opportunity, allowing American girls to get a glimpse of and experience women's football in Morocco and Moroccan girls to do the same with women's football in America. My personal goal for this program was to give them Moroccan teams a chance to play an American girls team and through the press and attention, highlight and increase the importance of Moroccan women's football. I think that happened (maybe not as much as I would have hoped but more than I expected, if that makes any sense). We had some great press coverage, all over the big TV stations as well as satellite arab TV (thanks to Reuters TV). We were in arabic and french papers as well. The tournament in Casablanca (our first stop on the tour) with Wydad, Berrchid and Sidi Moumen went really well, and was very well attended. Most of the Casablanca women's football scene was there, including the regional president of the women's league from the Federation (which for me really means nothing but added to the importance of the event just by his attendance at the press conference). There were a lot of other people there, faces I see often at games, at Federation conferences, opportunists, names I don't remember. I didn't thank really any of them and they right it off as me being a foreigner who doesn't understand proper etiquette. Little do they know that it is really just because I don't know
their names and have a rule that a "thank you" in front of the press from me requires you actually having done something related to the program.

My Sidi Moumen girls from the Cultural Center came and we played around during half time on the turf grass that Wydad just built (this was the first time these young girls ever played on any sort of surface other than dirt, rock, broken glass mixture they are used to near the center).

After Casa we traveled to Amzmiz and held clinics in Amzmiz with Sana and her group. Of course we had an amazing welcome, the group of boys and girls were there. We didn't get as many young girls (because it was ridiculously hot, summer, and many parents didn't want their daughters outside), but eventually we had enough girls and added some curious boys and did a good hour and a half of drills and games.

After Amzmiz was Fes (we played Abdi's team from Khenifra) and then had an amazing program in Oujda. The clinics went way better (partly because now the american girls knew what they were doing and partly because we had way more little girls and a nice field with equipment). Then we did the round table and then the game at night. It felt good to be in Oujda just because there are some really great girls there, and no league for them to play in. Oujda is a border/frontier town right next to Algeria in the north east. It apparently was a a bustling economic hub when the border was open but now is sort of a dead zone and just really far from all other Moroccan economic and social hubs. This also makes it hard for the girls team to enter the league. Not enough teams around them to start a regional league and too far to be affordable to travel and play in the other regions. So they are just stuck, traveling and guest playing with other teams but eventually, will have to give it up, get married and have nice memories of playing a game they loved.

After Oujda we finished up in Sale against a sort of national select team, Bahia's doing. Bahia is a great force in women's football and I think, of all the women and even men I have met in the domain, has good intentions rather than wanting a political post or some sort of money. We will see.

We had the ambassador come as well as the Mayor of Sale, lots of media again, and a nice reception.

Not the most sustainable of programs and a lot of money dished out by the embassy for just one week but I also would not have done it if I hadn't thought that the impact on women's football in Morocco would be big. I think it was. Hopefully through this team from Bethesda we can continue contact and get some donations to the teams and programs here. Maybe there are other ways for collaborations. Will continue thinking of things.

My next project is grassroots coaching training for women mostly. Still int he planning stages and looking for money of course.

Salim's prediction

My prediction for this cup is Argentina or Ghana because a little boy told me that Messi is God and mama Africa will always prevail. I think this little boy, whose name was Salim, thought that Messi played for Ghana because he was quite adamant that Messi and Ghana would win, both. I tried to explain that you can only have one winner but he wouldn't have it. We never reached an understanding.


Also an interesting application from France 24...
The Foot-o Booth is now available on facebook. This World Cup special application lets you show support on your facebook profile for your favorite team by painting the team’s colors onto an uploaded photo. Foot-o Booth on facebook is now up here : http://bit.ly/dB9YXd . How-to video here : http://bit.ly/9eOQ2R .


In addition to showing support, participants’ photos are broadcast daily on France 24. All fan photos submitted to Foot-o Booth are arranged in a World Cup 2010 Mosaic broadcast around the world during France 24’s international World Cup reporting. Check out an HD version of the current mosaic here : http://bit.ly/cvR1v4