Morocco's blind footballers hope Paralympics platform leads to bright future for game

It is probably the most impressive venue of the Paris Paralympics . Come Sunday lunchtime, its grandstands will be bedecked with Moroccan flags. But for the athletes starting out on what they hope will be an extended set of matches at the Eiffel Tower stadium, it is the sounds, not the sights, that matter. In blind football, or “cecifoot” as it is known in the French-speaking world, a five-a-side adaptation of the world’s most popular sport, supporters have to adhere to a strict code. During play, quietness is essential, so that the rattling noise of the moving ball is audible to the outfield players and so they can hear clearly the instructions from teammates and from the sighted guides placed around the touchlines and behind the goals. Cheering, naturally, is permitted, once a goal has been scored or a victory secured. And Morocco’s team are entitled to anticipate a good deal of applause in Paris over the coming days. “There’s a big Moroccan community in France and that’s certainly not going to do us any harm,” Driss El Mountaqi, the head coach, tells The National in a pause between practice sessions ahead of the weekend’s opening fixture against Argentina. “And we hope it can help give us an extra edge.” Morocco’s blind players have set high standards. They took home a bronze from the last Games, a first ever medal in blind football for an African or Arab nation. Because of the restrictions on audience numbers in Tokyo three summers ago, the atmosphere was necessarily muted, but the climax to Morocco’s tournament was exhilarating. They claimed third place with a 4-0 win over China, the gifted Zouhair Snisla scoring all the goals in a virtuoso display of dribbles and thunderous finishes. Snisla, who lost his sight following a childhood accident, is at his third Games. He travelled with Morocco to Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Paralympics as a 17-year-old and by Tokyo he was announcing himself as a star of the sport. There he struck eight goals from his five matches, while still recovering from an injury that had threatened his participation. Snisla, who recently graduated from Hassan II University with a literature degree, combines feathery close control with a fierce shot from both right and left feet. “He’s one of the best players in the world, and people acknowledged that at the Tokyo Games,” says El Mountaqi, while emphasising that Morocco’s “main quality is that we play with a lot of courage. We have a good technical level, but our strength is the collective“. Routines and relationships fine-tuned over the years are vital in a game where communication is key. Morocco bring plenty of shared experience to these Games. “We’ve kept some of the veterans but introduced younger players, new faces, so there’s a sense of renewing the team,” says their head coach. The skilful Abderazzak Hattab, 33 and in his 10th year as a Morocco international, remains a touchstone, and there is reassurance in the fine defensive covering of Hicham Lalas, 32. El Mountaqi is encouraged that a younger cohort “can give the best of themselves. Players like Mohamed El Hamouchi, who’s 21, Ayoub Hamdini and Said El Meselek have progressed a lot and they’re all brave young men.” Hamdini and Meselek were both in Tokyo but, now in their 20s, bring an added know-how to the squad. Khalid Kermadi has come in, post Tokyo, at the top of the goalkeeping hierarchy; the keepers in cecifoot are sighted athletes. The challenges for the blind footballers are many, and while Morocco’s Olympians are proud of their pioneering achievements, the battle for opportunity and institutional support is constant. “We work under constraint,” El Mountaqi explains. “Cecifoot is relatively underdeveloped where we are and we are representing a continent where it’s very underdeveloped indeed. We hope moments like the Paralympics encourage more resources into the sport. There’s a lot of very good players in our region, dreaming of going further.” He is accustomed to hearing links made between his players, pathfinders for their sport, and the Atlas Lions and Lionesses, the elite footballers who in the last two years have set new benchmarks for Morocco and the Mena region by reaching, respectively, the men’s World Cup semi-final in Qatar and the knockout phase of the women’s World Cup in Australasia. But these are hardly like-for-like comparisons. “Of course, we’re all really pleased for what’s been happening in Moroccan football, but cecifoot has only a limited connection with the able-bodied game,” says El Mountaqi. “We want to make sure cecifoot has its own place in our national sports – we have our own sets of titles and achievements.” And, El Mountaqi is proud to point out, there is quite a stack of them. “Morocco have been African champions in blind football five times. That’s unique to us.” The Atlas Lions, meanwhile, have only ever been champions once at an Africa Cup of Nations in more than 60 years of competing for that prize. But, in Paris, there is an immediate football precedent that’s hard to ignore. Some of those fans eager to see Snisla, Hattab and company in action under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower were earlier this month celebrating Morocco’s men’s footballers, led by Achraf Hakimi and Soufiane Rahimi, winning a bronze medal at the Olympics . By coincidence, they also began their tournament against Argentina, an extraordinary match that ended in a Morocco victory only after a delay of almost two hours late in the second half because of unrest in the crowd. There’ll be no repeat of that at the cecifoot, a sport where decorum among those watching is essential, where the clearest sound should be that of the ball. Morocco-Argentina, kicking off in the midday heat, is matchday one’s most compelling group game. Argentina, winners of last year’s world championship, finished with a silver medal in Tokyo, their fourth podium finish in a sport that first appeared at the Paralympics in 2004. For all Argentina’s consistent excellence and the stirring rise of Morocco, the dominant nation are Brazil, owners of the gold medals from every Paralympics where blind football has featured. It was Brazil, by a single, late goal in the Tokyo semi-final who kept Morocco from gaining at least silver last time. That narrow margin has not been forgotten. “We can beat the likes of Brazil,” says Snisla in the lead up to these Games. “We always make things hard for them and I think they see us as their most difficult opponent.” The Brazilians, China, hosts France and Turkey are in Group A. After the meeting with Argentina, Morocco’s remaining Group B rivals will be Japan and Colombia, with the top pair from each group advancing to the semis. “We really hope for a medal,” says El Mountaqi. “We’ve set a bar for ourselves. The bronze in Tokyo was a great achievement for a country like ours, out there competing with the very best in the world. “I sometimes heard it said we had some luck at the last Paralympics. Not at all. We made our own luck and we’ll be giving our absolute maximum to be on that podium again.”

Morocco's blind footballers hope Paralympics platform leads to bright future for game

Five-time African champions won bronze in Tokyo and have high expectations in Paris