2023-08-02 21:33:37
TorellóThe summer of 2023 will be remembered in Morocco for the debut of the women’s team in a World Cup. “Since we qualified a year ago, I’ve had a voice in my brain that keeps repeating: “You, you’re going to play in the World Cup!”. It’s a dream, the ultimate. I’ve been wishing for the summer to come to play in the World Cup for months. We are all very proud to have made history for Morocco. And not only on a sporting level, but also for everything it means on a social and cultural level in Morocco,” says Yasmin Katie Mrabet Slack (Madrid, 1999) from Australia, player of Llevant Les Planes, key piece in the ascent to the top category last year and in the permanence of this one.
A year ago now, at the Africa Cup, she celebrated the most important goal in the history of the Moroccan women’s team: the goal that gave access to the World Cup. He’s seen it dozens of times, if not more. And every time he sees it, he smiles: “It’s a memory I have forever. Football takes a lot out of you, but you live for moments like these. It’s the goal everyone dreams of. It was a beautiful moment, an explosion of happiness . The stadium exploded, it was roaring. I was happy for me, for the team, but above all I felt happy for the feeling of making so many people happy. To see so much happiness in so many people, so many people coming to give me a hug, kiss, it made me feel even happier. I can’t describe it in words, I think,” she emphasizes. He didn’t sleep that night.
The Africa Cup, despite the defeat in the final against South Africa, marked a before and after for women’s football in Morocco, the host country. It will be again in the 2024 edition: clear proof of the growth of the sport in this country. “I arrived at the Africa Cup without anyone knowing me. And now in Morocco they recognize me. There are people who ask me for photos or autographs. For me it was a shock. And for my parents, more. But they love it. Always they brag: ‘She’s my daughter’. One day, before a game, my mother approached a journalist to tell him that she was my mother to interview him,” smiles the soccer player. He speaks, with pride, of the “bestial” support he feels for his country, which will be pending the match against Colombia this Thursday (12 p.m.). The qualification for the round of 16 is complicated.
Soccer has always been a very popular sport in Morocco. The king sport, however, had always been a game for boys and men. “Yes, but like in Morocco, everywhere,” clarifies Mrabet. “Women’s football is now being given much more visibility and the results we are achieving allow girls to have references and to see that they can play football, that they can do what they want. Not only in sport, but in life in general. That they can open doors. And if they can’t open them, they can knock them down. This is the message we want to convey on a social scale,” he emphasizes. He takes a breath and continues: “The most important thing is that they have the opportunities and that the decision to play or not is theirs. We want to play a big role so that people feel proud of us and want to come and see us, be like us . To open minds, to open doors and opportunities for girls. And to make the children also have us as references. Football is something very important in Morocco, because it unites society, and we want to be part of it.”
Mrabet grew up in Madrid being the only girl who played soccer at school and in the neighborhood: “I was completely unaware of women’s soccer. I thought I should always play with boys.” His first idols, in fact, were David Villa and Steven Gerrard. The first female reference, Vero Boquete, took years to arrive: “As a child, what I saw on TV were always boys and, of course, my references were boys.” When she signed up for her first club, at the age of seven, they left her in the D team because she was a child, without any experience: by the winter she was already in the A team. “As a child you feel indestructible,” she says.
Morocco debuted with a defeat against Germany, but beat South Korea and has reached the final day, against Colombia, with the dream alive of being in the qualifiers even if it is a debutant. If he does, he would play in the round of 16 on August 8, Mrabet’s 24th birthday: “It would be incredible. The best present,” he says dreamily.
He says he feels much more eager than nervous. And he speaks happily: “Two years ago I was going to quit football because I was having a really bad time due to injuries and today I’m playing in a World Cup. In life you have to know how to take advantage of the good moments and not get frustrated in the bad, but keep the cold head to know how to identify them and to know where you are, where you want to get there and how to get there. You have to enjoy the moments when you are on top of the world to the fullest, know that they are ephemeral, that they won’t last forever, and keep going working”.
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