Mauritania players celebrate their victory over Algeria and qualification for the 2024 Africa Cup of Nations final (Reuters)
Mauritania, Iceland, football, the opium of the people, and its mirror. What context can bring these things together? Before looking for the answer, we can ask more questions first; How many people got to know Argentina thanks to its foreign policy compared to those who knew it through Maradona and Messi? Who showed the world the magic of Brazil, Pele or the government that honored him after winning three World Cup titles? (1)(2)
These questions mean a lot, but there is one thing we can agree on: Football has some effect. Is it positive? negative? big? Limited? The answer changes depending on what's happening in each habitat of the game. The decision remains in the hands of the bearer. Whoever wants football to be opium for the people, it will be for him, and whoever wants life through it, it will give him what he wants.
These seem like very exaggerated romantic expressions, but they embodied a reality in Mauritania, after a historic appearance in the 2024 African Cup of Nations ended in a dramatic ending, and it was embodied years before that with a historic trip to Iceland in Euro 2016, and between them football was an outlet for the people, and an outlet for the lives of their children and teenagers. , political, psychological, and social interest, and perhaps things too great for the mind to believe (3)(4).
From Mauritania to the world
Mauritania players cried in each other's arms after their victory over Algeria (French)
An epic scene, the players crying in each other's arms, after leading their country, Mauritania, to victory over Algeria, and qualifying for the final of the 2024 African Cup of Nations in Côte d'Ivoire. In the analytical studio for the match on the beIN Sports channel network, Mauritanian analyst Mohamed Alaoui appeared crying bitterly as well. In a scene that seemed serious to a degree that exceeded many people’s perceptions of football (5)(6).
In "
Maidan
", we went to Mauritania to find out the reason for all these tears and feelings, through Al-Alawi, an analyst for the beIN Sports network, and the ambassador of his generation's dreams from Nouakchott and its environs to Coverciano, where the school of wisdom and knowledge in Italian football produced the geniuses of the game. And the young journalist Deneen Al-Bashir, for whom experiences like these opened a window towards life, through football. Both of them completed for us the missing parts about Mauritania’s journey from the height of chaos, along a paved path to the spotlight of African football (7).
Deneen talks about life in Mauritania before 2011, from a football perspective, of course. He told Meedan that football in the country during this period was going through its nadir, where the stadiums were closer to abandoned graves, and the players were the most marginalized groups in society, while the conversation revolves around... The media reported successive withdrawals instead of participations, and the Football Association is on its way to bankruptcy. From his point of view, talk about developing football in Mauritania at that time was “the joke of the century.”
While Mohammadi Al-Alawi described to “Meydan” the scene as dark to the point that the electricity company cut off the power to the federation’s headquarters due to the delay in paying the bill. As for the league’s situation, it was miserable, as it consisted of only nine teams, in empty, silent stadiums, and a team that was legally withdrawn by the federation. Due to his withdrawal from the qualifiers, he was subjected to a penalty of exclusion for four years.
At a time when Mauritania was ranked 203rd out of 206 national teams in 2011 by FIFA, a young man named Ahmed Ould Yahia came clinging to hope, which the Mauritanians initially thought was “false hope,” according to Al-Alawi’s description, to the point that the man was described as crazy when he spoke about... His desire to fix what life has ruined (8).
Ahmed Ould Yahia ran for president of the Mauritanian Football Federation, and actually won the seat. During his success speech, he said a sentence that remained in everyone’s minds: “The lethargy that Mauritanian football suffers from is not an inevitable fate until we surrender to it, but it is a disease that needs treatment.” According to Al-Alawi’s description, this young man found treatment after football life in the country stopped completely (9).
National project
Some may be surprised by the seriousness of talking about football in terms of hope, reform, illness and treatment in a country that certainly suffers from greater problems, but because it is soft power and a popular game, you can sometimes see it from that serious perspective. Ould Yahia thought of turning football into a national project supervised by the state, so that football would be Mauritania’s window to the world.
Al-Bashir confirms that the man’s plan focused on convincing the state of the importance of the game among youth and its repercussions on the future, resulting in a government contribution to developing infrastructure, sports medicine, and establishing a channel that broadcasts the national league after the sources for following the game or even the results were non-existent, which resulted in interest in organizing League championships for all age groups, after the matter was managed randomly. Then he brought in the best lecturers to conduct courses for local sports coaches who lacked knowledge. He held the first courses in the history of Mauritania for coaches and referees, and helped many young people seeking knowledge to access it, among them. Al-Alawi, who became an example of the feasibility of the project and its impact on individuals, and not just on clubs and the national team (10).
The curve has gone upward, coaches have become available, knowledge and its means have become available, and there has become a game governed by a system and a plan, and within 8 years, Mauritania has succeeded in achieving the most important achievement in its history by qualifying for the 2019 African Cup of Nations, so that Ahmed Ould Yahia won the award for the best manager in the continent, while he was crowned Al-Mourabitoun as the best national team from the African Union. Al-Bashir says that qualifying for the tournament three times in a row resulted in that historic third participation in 2024, for which he was prepared by hiring a coach who made the event with the Comoros in the 2021 edition. He has a good background in the local league due to his exposure to Mauritanian culture, because he was coaching the Nouadhibou club with the Comoros national team. The final step comes by convincing players of dual nationality of Mauritanian origin to wear the shirt of their home country. The most prominent of them was striker Abu Bakari Koita, who competes for the top scorer in the Belgian league with 11 goals (11)(12)(13).
Striker Abu Bakari Koita, who is competing for the top scorer in the Belgian league with 11 goals. (French)
This project produced a team that delighted the hearts of millions who yearn for joy, which Al-Alawi described by saying: “It has become clear that football is the only one capable of stirring the people’s feelings and uniting them absolutely. We discovered this recently. Our lives became better with the improvement of the team’s results, and on the night of the qualification.” Historically, until the second round, four million Mauritanians lived a new life and celebrated together in all their colors, and despite the end of the adventure with a dramatic loss to Cape Verde in the round of 16, Mauritanians feel proud of their team’s performance, and look forward to what is best in the upcoming tournaments.” In fact, Mauritania reminds us of what happened 8 years ago, but this time in Europe, where Iceland was the hero of another story.
Icelandic experience
A few years ago, there were only about 334 thousand people inhabiting a group of small islands known to the world as “Iceland,” and their voices were hardly heard on any side of the globe. In Euro 2016, the sound of their applause spread to the beat of drums in every inch of the world, and they painted with their waving hands a painting no less beautiful than what Da Vinci created, and they created with their voices what was equivalent to Beethoven’s creations. Sound and image did not create this abstractly, but rather they created this speaking painting by mixing them with terraces and grass. Green, surrounding players and a ball, proved its ability to make a lot of difference in the world (14).
After their exceptional journey in Euro 2016, eliminating England from the round of 16 and qualifying for the quarter-finals, the world learned the story of the small island, which lived 16 years of football obsession, an adventure that began for a noble goal, which is to save teenagers from alcohol and drug addiction, and to save the country’s streets after... They became criminal dens (15).
Icelandic national team players celebrate the victory and elimination of England from the round of 16 in Euro 2016, and qualification to the quarter-finals. (Getty)
Only two years before the beginning of the twentieth century, the streets of Iceland were more dangerous than Chicago, and according to government statistics, the percentage of alcoholics among teenagers reached 40%, and the percentage of drug addicts was 23%, and of course we do not need to talk about the rates of traditional cigarette smoking after that terrifying statistic ( 16).
The government had already realized the danger, and the Icelandic Center for Social Research and Analysis started the “Iceland Without Drugs” program, and it later changed to “Iceland’s Youth,” after the government perhaps realized that the problem was not the drugs themselves as much as it was the reasons that lead to their abuse and addiction, and here The idea was (17).
Football...discipline and reform!
Is there addiction among teenagers? Well, don't treat them like criminals but listen to them, simple as that? Yes, as I read, the government has begun preparing a questionnaire for teenagers to ask them questions such as: Have you tried smoking before? When was the last time you drank alcohol? Do you engage in recreational activities? How many hours do you spend in the morning with your parents? After counting the answers, the preparation of the long-term plan for recovery began (18).
The situation began to be controlled by banning teenagers from curfew after 10 p.m., and banning the sale of alcohol to those under 20 years old, but will we punish these poor people and punish them for their addiction when they suffer from withdrawal symptoms? Or will we take them into their own hands? They chose the second solution, because you knew very well that the first would lead to a much more severe relapse (19).
Between 1998 and 2017, the percentage of teenagers’ addiction to alcohol decreased from 40% to only 5%, compared to a dramatic increase in the number of people practicing sports activities (Getty)
Immediately, the government conducted a random survey to find out the children’s inclinations between music and sports, then took them from schools to sports and artistic arenas so that they could express themselves, each on their own field. It asked the parents to come and encourage them and pay attention to that aspect, and announced a grant of 300 euros for each family in which a child practices or Children - from 6 to 16 years old - play sports professionally, to find something to practice, love, and through which they discover themselves, and to touch the feelings of their family and companions, where play, freedom, stories, and life, instead of the repression and emptiness that send them to drugs and alcohol (20)(21).
The result? Between 1998 and 2017, the rate of teenage alcoholism decreased from 40% to only 5%, in exchange for a dramatic increase in the number of people practicing sports activities. The government, in cooperation with the European Union, established another national project to convert all grassy areas into football fields to accommodate the number of young people fleeing from the country. Addiction, and the future of life (22).
The high percentage of football players made them in need of coaches, and while the country did not have professional coaches, a program from the Football Association with the help of some investors was immediately started to support local coaches. Thanks to him, most of them traveled to England to obtain training courses approved by the European Union, turning Iceland into one of the countries with the most certified trainers. More than 560 coaches have a B license, and more than 165 coaches have an A license, which gives the coach the right to coach youth and first-team teams at the European level, which is an exceptional percentage for a country with a population of barely 300,000 people. Iceland now has one certified coach for every 825 people, compared to one certified coach for every 11,000 people in England. Premier League country (23)(24)(25).
The opium of the people or its mirror?
We now return to the starting point, where football and its influence is evident in a tournament such as the World Cup, which is followed by about a third of the planet's population. This is a significant soft power that you can exploit as a tool to achieve what you want. But in the end, it is just a tool, with which people flourish or become opium for them depending on the mood of those who control it (26).
Mohamed Al-Alawi confirmed that the Mauritanian league is gradually improving, despite its need for a bigger leap, especially in the issue of formation. (Reuters)
There are those who use it to cover up crimes, as the military dictatorship did in Argentina, and there are those who use it to stop crimes, as happened in Iceland. There are those who make people ignorant of it with empty chatter, and those who make it a window to knowledge, as happened in Mauritania. There is corruption, ignorance, corruption, and ignorance in many places, and there is Ahmed Ould Yahya in Mauritania, and thousands of teenagers in Iceland who were led by football to recover from addiction, and stories of this and that will never end (27)(28).
Because life requires the continuation of these projects in an upward manner; Muhammad Al-Alawi concludes his talk to Meedan by confirming that the Mauritanian league has gradually improved, despite its need for a greater leap, especially in the issue of training, stressing the inevitability of improvement in training paths, especially those related to coaches, as well as the need for greater development in the infrastructure, which is a responsibility. Country.
Looking at the Nouadhibou club as a distinguished example - the club that Ould Yahia established in conjunction with his presidency of the National Football Federation - after reaching the African Champions League for the first time in its history, and strengthening the national team with more than one player, we can anticipate what Mauritanian football will need in the coming years. You need businessmen who are willing to take risks, consolidate the culture of investment in the game, and exploit this situation in which the father is ready to send his son to a football academy with all passion, after this was madness in the past, as Mohammadi Al-Alawi described concluding his speech. In sympathy with him, Deneen Al-Bashir also concluded his speech by stressing the necessity of having more academies, to produce more professionals (29)(30).
It is worth noting that the story of Iceland from crime to recovery was not told by a writer or storyteller, but rather a picture painted by the famous crowd applause at Euro 2016. It was painted in Mauritania by the tears of Al-Alawi and Al-Bashir, and 4 million citizens searching for sincere joy, which made the two stories bigger than just qualifying for the round of 16. Or the quarter-finals in a continental tournament. Thus, it made football more than just a game, a reality and not a romantic slogan. Now you can answer: Is it the opium of the people or its mirror?
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Sources
1 – The 25 most famous things Argentina is known for
2- Pele's politics are still a sensitive topic in Brazil
3 - Combat and work in silence...the “recipe” for the Mauritanian national team for success
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12 - Dual nationality players: elaborate policies for the football teams in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia
13 - Statistics of Abu Bakari Koita, star of the Mauritanian national team
14 – Iceland
15 - How were Iceland behind one of England's biggest football insults?
16 - The radical shift in teenage drug use in Iceland
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18 - Previous source
19 – Drug Policy in Iceland: A Paradigm Shift on the Horizon?
20 - Previous source
21 – Iceland Model: Overcoming a teenage drug problem
22 - Previous source
23 – Iceland knows how to stop teen drug use but the rest of the world isn't listening
24 - How is Iceland winning the war on teenage drug use?
25 – How Iceland made teenagers reject drugs – The Icelandic model
26 – Record TV viewing numbers for the FIFA World Cup
27 – Amazing moments in the World Cup: Mussolini’s victory in the black shirts in 1938
28 – Football that saves lives
29 - “Al-Mourabitoun”... What is behind the Mauritanian miracle among the nations of Africa?
30 - Mauritanian Football Federation - “FIFA”
Source: Al Jazeera