Women's soccer specific stadium!

(Empty wasted garbage filled space which could be cleared and turned into a field in Sidi Moumen...one example of many)

I know this is not news from North Africa/Middle East but rather from Kennesaw, Georgia, but roll with me.

The new expansion women's pro team in Atlanta is building a soccer specific stadium in partnership with Kennesaw State University, a $16.5 million, 8,300-seat stadium. They are saying it will be one of the only women specific soccer stadium's in the world (which may or may not be true, not sure) and if true, then it is pretty exciting and could work, particularly in the states because of the women's game's popularity.

Perhaps we can convince the mayor of Sidi Moumen to build a field for Nassim, the women's team. There is enough empty space filled with nothing but garbage, I'm sure they could clear a bit of land, help the environment as well as local women's football. No, actually, what we need more are apartment building too expensive for inhabitants or some new sort of INDH center that stands empty most days but is a great impressive notch on the local governments CV demonstrating their ability to, as superficially as possible, help local citizens.

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.

Football's energy finaly harnassed

What a great example of what happens when simple ideas are applied to sports! Check out this story

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/using-soccer-to-supplant-kerosene-use/#more-38859

A group of Harvard students come up with a way to gather energy from the kicking and playing around with a football and use it to light rooms, charge cell phones at night. Free energy combined with one of the greatest, most played and most accessible sports in the word plus a positive impact on the environment because it could (theoretically) reduce kerosene lamp use, and you have an extraordinary product. Their distribution method is interesting too although I am not so sure how much of their US/high income bracket sales will be made because of this ball's attractiveness as a new tech gizmo compared to the attractiveness of "must help out developing countries, particularly through football as the World Cup approaches", but in the end, whatever gets the job done.

How great would it be if they could get the ball to be used in the kickoff of the first world cup game! Hmmm...

Journeys to South Africa, 2010

I was recently visited by a group of Portuguese journalists last week working for one of the biggest papers in Portugal. They are making their way down to South Africa in this pretty intense looking 4x4, reporting on stories about football in each country they pass through from now until the World Cup in June in South Africa. They ended up doing stories on the Sidi Moumen football team as well as the girls down in Amzmiz! Check out their blog (its in Portuguese but still pretty exciting).

http://worldcup.record.xl.pt/

Latin America, Middle East...same uniforms and smiles

Great piece on women's football in Peru and how it is linked to land reform and women's struggle for a place in society on the Global Game blog.

http://www.theglobalgame.com/blog/2010/01/peruvian-women-in-fulbito-andino-find-light-in-the-darkness/

What stuck me most about this story is one of the pictures, of the Peruvian girls juggling a ball in her skirt and pink uniform top and the other girls watching. Their uniforms, even the smiles on their face as they watch this girl juggle, reminded me of a picture I took in a locker room in Rabat. The girl was juggling and another watching her. The picture has such a feeling of similarity, parallel worlds on the same track. The quote to from one of the women in the article too reminded me of so many things I have often heard here..."The football world beyond our mountains we do not know. We do not know who plays there, who are the best players, what they wear and the rules that everyone follows. We only play in order to have some happy moments, to have fun. Of technique and tactics we do not understand much. But we play with our hearts, with all our will. And that brings us together into a single force. That is football for us."

What else do we need football to be. Something so universal yet for these women, something so isolated, their football, in their mountains, with their rules, their happy moments.

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.