Football is also a political tool. The Franco-Moroccan Abdeslam Ouaddou was not unaware of it, but he suffered it brutally. At 42, the former defender of Nancy and Rennes, who was also captain of the Moroccan national team, finds himself caught in the trap of passions around Western Sahara, one of the oldest unresolved conflicts in France. Africa.
In recent months, Morocco and the Polisario Front, supported by Algeria, have again defied each other militarily. On social networks, extremists from both camps spread hatred and propaganda, insults and slander. It is in this context that Mr. Ouaddou sees himself as a “Traitor” by compatriots, suspected of being a “Agent” Algerian secret services. He is also the subject of racist attacks – some internet users mock his tanned South Moroccan skin and compare him to a monkey.
Perhaps out of naivety, provocation or anger, he joined the Algerian national team at the end of 2020 as an apprentice coach. After wearing the Morocco jersey for more than ten years, the sportsman has set his sights on the reigning African champion to complete an internship necessary to obtain his coaching diploma. Which makes him a target.
“I regret ideological conformism”
“But what enemy are they talking about? Me, I am in the field of football, not of politics, he said, still hurt by the violence of the words. I regret an ideological conformism and a dictatorship of thought that is dangerous for Morocco. I do what I want and I am honored to have been welcomed in Algeria. “
To explain his choice, Mr. Ouaddou highlights his desire to learn alongside the “Best African coach”. This is how he speaks of the Algerian coach, Djamel Belmadi, who was briefly his coach in Qatar. But there is another reason, a deep injury inflicted by the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF), which has failed to respond to its repeated requests for an internship with the national team. The Moroccan sports institution did not wish to react.
For the former player, born in an oasis in southern Morocco and immigrated at the age of 2 to France, where his father was exhausted in a mine in the North, it is a humiliation. He who has more than 80 selections in the national team, including the CAN 2004 final (lost to Tunisia), which earned him, along with his teammates, to be decorated by King Mohammed VI of the officer’s order, in vain to insist. In vain. His messages, which he made public, addressed to the national technical director of the federation, the Welshman Osian Roberts, remained unanswered.
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