Sarhan narrates "The Tale of the Pen and the Foot" in the football fields between passion and disappointment.
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Sport
Sarhan narrates "The Tale of the Pen and the Foot" in the football fields between passion and disappointment.
Hesspress Sports·
On the green pages of the fields, and with ink made of air, the feet record exquisite moments that impress the pens or their memory, prompting them to respond with ink of praise or ink of envy. And since the duality of the pen and the foot is not a perfect rhyme, sometimes a lack of harmony is acceptable.
The bearers of the pens, those who know the world and people, were not always so since their early days; they too were youths with hobbies and talents, peers and playgrounds, and football is not absent from this aspect. Therefore, many writers, from various backgrounds, engage with the game with a passion that borders on authorship, or a repulsion that borders on incitement.
If Brazil has given birth to its football king Pelé, it also gave birth before him to the great novelist Jorge Amado, who dedicated his works to the underbelly of society, where football is more of an identity than a game. Amado contributed to football in his literary fabric like no one else has or will, to the extent that his name became forever linked to it; who else carries the title of "the Pelé of literature"?
And if Argentina, Brazil's traditional rival, has given the game its marvel, it also gave to the kingdom of literature one of its brightest gems: Borges. It is true that blindness gradually crept into his sight until it completely consumed him, so he did not see what we saw, but he possessed a vision far beyond mere sight. So why did our great writer despise football to the point of contempt? And why did he place himself directly in opposition to it when he scheduled his lectures in '78 at the same time as his country's matches in the World Cup? Surely the man had his reasons. Yet the game he insisted on ruining with his stances, and failed to do so, as Argentina won that World Cup in spite of his provocations and in spite of his lectures, is the same game that succeeded in ruining his death. For when he passed away in '86 in Geneva, Argentina was celebrating its consecutive victories on the way to its second title, leaving no room for mourning him... for he is not "the Maradona of literature."
The third pillar that fuels the fire of the game is Uruguay, the country that hosted the first World Cup and won it on the centenary of its independence. It is true that it has produced fewer talents than its two fierce neighbors, but its passion for football is no less fervent. It is enough honor for it to have gifted the world an exceptional writer, Eduardo Galeano. Galeano, who authored dozens of books illuminating the memory of Latin America and dissecting its veins, was himself so obsessed with the game that he hung a sign on his door saying "Closed for Football," so he could watch without disturbance, a phrase he later made the title of one of his books, just as he is the editor and presenter of "The Majesty of Football," which is a collection of great writers' works about the game. However, his most famous book is "Football in Sun and Shadow," a book that, had Galeano not written it, "the Majesty of Football" itself would have had to contract someone to write about it... and surely, it would not have found a way to do so.
It is worth noting that Galeano was a great football player, in his dreams of course, just like the writer of these lines who has never scored any memorable goals, neither in football nor in anything else, due to his poor positioning in the fields of life.
And do not think ill of me, dear reader, for my destination is not the city of Medellín, but rather the village of Macondo, and on the way there, one must greet the mighty Valderama as well as the giant scorpion Higuita, before paying respects to Colonel Aureliano Buendía... As for Gabo, he is the essence of the journey. Who else, other than the greatest Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, succeeded, solely through literature, in placing his country at the forefront of maps, and what other magician gifted the earth a village from his imagination that would become real after his departure?
García Márquez also played football in his youth, and even when he stopped playing due to a painful injury, he did not cease to follow and be passionate about it; in fact, he once bet a friend on Colombia winning the World Cup, losing his "Mercedes," the car of course, not the wife. And it is fortunate for humanity that what happened to him happened, for even if he had played a hundred years of football, he would not have achieved anything noteworthy compared to "One Hundred Years of Solitude." It is enough now that no player in the Colombian league receives his salary in anything other than currency bearing Márquez's image, and that the national team will wear shirts with yellow butterflies inspired by his immortal novel in this year's 2026 World Cup, just as it is enough that Colombian fields will never give birth to a "Márquez of football."
And far from Latin America, the magical hat of football as well as literature, there are dozens of writers who have been touched by the game, their names linked to it through practice, passion, or even authorship. I mention among them Albert Camus, Mahmoud Darwish, Naguib Mahfouz, Jean Cocteau, Khairy Shalaby, Paolo Pasolini, Rashid Boujedra, Ibrahim Aslan, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and T.S. Eliot.
As for Morocco, where the passion for football is rivaled only by the percentage of red blood cells, most writers have not expressed that passion through tangible literary works.
The late poet Ahmed Sabri, the most literary name associated with football, as a coach, teacher, journalist, critic, and manager... left no work on the subject for the Moroccan library. Had he done so, he would have "gifted us a ball and died."
The late Abdelkebir Khatibi was a talented football player in his youth, and had he continued in the fields, he would have been a star for Hassania Agadir, and the most he would have achieved would be to become a worthy predecessor to Reda Rayahi. However, since he turned away from the game in favor of scientific research, he reached what he reached in the field of sociology. Perhaps Roland Barthes' article "This is What I Owe to Khatibi" confirms the stature and value of the man. The football equivalent of Barthes' praise for Khatibi is precisely Pelé's praise for the Arab Benmbarak.
As for Abdelkarim Jouyiti, the author of the wonderful novel "The Moroccans," he is known for his obsession with football and his involvement to the extent of taking on a management role at the Raja Beni Mellal club. He has published a series of beautiful papers about the game, which we hope will culminate in a book.
Few know that Wydad Casablanca was named after the film "Widad" starring Umm Kulthum, and even fewer know that the Star of the East has a sister that only the people of Marrakech find melodious, a sister unknown to the Star of the West, as it always seeks to be known by its operational name, the Marrakech Star. I said "always" because it is an inseparable part of the name, Dima Kawkab. In Marrakech, permanence belongs to God and to the star.
Despite the talents the team has produced and the writers the city has given birth to, what the Kawkab has received so far in terms of documentation and authorship has come from two journalists, Adel Belqadi and Salam Belkhir, through the two books:
"Kawkab Marrakech, 76 Years of Glory" and "Kawkab Marrakech Sports Club, History and Path," which I propose should be made available in sufficient quantities at the team's official store.
Mouloudia Marrakech, the city's second team, included among its ranks a defender nicknamed Aziz Jha, who is none other than Abdelaziz Ait Bensalah, the well-known novelist, who, from his position as a historian, authored a book titled "Football and the Resistance Movement, Mouloudia Marrakech and the Ethics of Nationalism." Perhaps one of Jha's ironies is that the Mouloudia team now plays in the fourth division, while he writes among the elite.
A visit to Marrakech is not complete without greeting its amazing writer, Yassine Adnan, for he has written about it and elevated its status literarily like no one else. The creator of "Hot Maroc" fully understands that the heat of the country rises with the arrival of football. Therefore, he is often present at its events, just as he is with others, like a thermometer at the time of fever, recording what he records of its degrees to gauge the limits of the symptom from the illness. Most viewers of his successful television programs do not know that the serious media face has a heart deeply passionate about the game, as Yassine Adnan is passionate about football to the core: a spectacle whenever and wherever possible, and reading since I owe him my well-stocked library with more than one book about the game, and writing since he has published, on various occasions, beautiful posts about it, which we only hope he will publish in a book. How happy "The Posts of the Passerby" would be with its younger sister teasing it from one of the library shelves, its sister that bears the name "The Posts of the Spectator."
