To say that integrating into daily life in Morocco was and still is a bit of a culture shock would be an understatement. The best way for me to describe my experience so far would be to ask you to cast you mind back 15 - 20 years and think of the everyday things that were perfectly acceptable back then – this is Morocco. For example smoking cigarettes is perfectly acceptable everywhere, very few people wear a seat belt in a car, the concept of health and safety is non-existent and the most bizaar experience to date, was riding in a taxi with 2 people in the front seat and 5 people (all perfect strangers) in the back. Luckily I was on the outside seat in the back near the window as the second to middle passenger decided to have a cigarette whilst in transit.
One of the hardest aspects of living in North Africa is the language barrier. There are 2 main languages in Morocco, Arabic and French, neither of which I am competent in to say the least. However, when faced with this problem, you learn to adapt pretty quickly and it is a challenge I would advise anyone to embrace at some point during your life time.
On the football side of things it is very much the same challenge. The facilities are outdated, poorly maintained and primitive in comparison to what you would see in Europe and the US, so much of the time you have to make the best of what you are dealt with for training and games. The surfaces played on range from the “old school” carpet type astro turf, sand, concrete in some cases the occasional grass pitch which seems like Wembley to the players when they get to play on it. Fortunately for us we train at a centre in Casablanca where we have the luxury of using the local professional clubs facilities which are in very good shape by Moroccan standards although still a little rough around the edges.
The youth system here is very informal and unstructured at the grass roots level and breeds an obvious passion and love for the game – Every little boy here loves football. It is very common to see kids and adults playing in the streets and more interesting we played a local U11 side in a friendly and they turned up with no adult supervision or coach – they made their own way to the ground and just organized themselves, which I found to be quite amusing. This informality and lack of indoctrination through excessive coaching inadvertently creates players that are very creative and exciting to watch, which is evident when observing the young kids play. Some of the inventiveness, impulsive tricks, flicks and skills are quite impressive.
Recently, there appears to be a movement to become more organized. Currently at Arsenal Soccer Schools we have 2 of our competitive teams playing in a newly formed league with the youth teams of Moroccan professional clubs and local Soccer Schools. This is a major step forward in terms of youth development, at least at the grass roots level. Now we are able to blend training, organized competitive games with unstructured play, which all of the players engage in outside of the soccer schools programs gives our players a more ideal blend of football activities throughout the week.
Through my experience albeit limited at the moment, there seems to be a lack of opportunities for young players to get into the right environment to hone their skills and work towards being professional footballers, especially at the younger age groups. The professional clubs run their Academies and there are a few soccer schools dotted around but still nothing to take those players with real ability and create opportunities for them.
This is a shame because there is an abundance of raw talent in this country, eager and hungry to make something of themselves but no real way of doing it. At the school we are making major steps in helping provide opportunities for these type of players to progress. In July we have been invited to take a group to Italy where our players will partake in training and trial matches at the Empoli training centre for players aged 16 – 21 where scouts will be present to assess the players from multiple Italian clubs. It is the hope that some of the players be offered further trials or a position in the youth set up with an Italian professional club if the impress.
On the other side of the pendulum the Arsenal Soccer School also provides opportunities for those players who just want to play recreationally. We currently have over 400 players in the school who enjoy structured coaching sessions and match days at the weekend, led by qualified coaches.
THE EVERY DAY COACHING CHALLENGE
The biggest challenge of working in Morocco and probably the biggest challenge I have encountered from a coaching point of view to date is the very evident language barrier that exists in our soccer school. To put things into perspective, some players speak French and Arabic, some players only speak Arabic, some players only speak French. We have 3 English only speaking coaches and 1 Spanish speaking coach who speaks very little English. In order to run our programs successfully there is an immense amount of planning and preparation that must be done each week to ensure that our sessions and games program are successful and achieve the intended learning outcomes for the players. Interestingly as an exercise I sourced feedback on twitter asking the question “Any ideas on how to coach foreign players” I got a lot of good feedback but one thing that sticks out is that someone mentioned that “soccer language is the same all over the world, use hand gestures and demonstrations”.
The reality is, is that soccer language is not the same – for example English football is riddled with slang terms and words that do not really translate such as the term “mark up”. In Arabic to mark up they use the term “wahde, wahde” which literally means “One, One” So if I were to try to translate the term mark up from English to Arabic, there would be confusion as to what I am instructing the player to do. This is just a small example of the language and cultural difference that exists. The main challenge isn’t organizing your activities and commanding your sessions, it’s very much to do with communicating the depth of detail in your coaching points needed to improve your players.
Here are some of the strategies that we use in our training program:
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MATCH DAY COACHING
We approach each match with a goal in mind. For example we may want to see our players defend deep and counter attack quickly before the other team has a chance to recover. The following week we may work on possessing the ball. We find that this works because we can at least approach the game with a particular goal in mind and recap on our effectiveness in the game at achieving these goals.
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as verbal cues and reminders for players to 4 – 5 terms that are easy to understand.
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directly relates to the topic that we are focused on for the day, with little pointers here and there is something is not working for a player during the game.
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Living and working in a country with big cultural differences and a language barrier has thus far been a great experience and one I would encourage any coach to embrace. Learning to deal with the everyday challenges and always having to find new and better ways to become a more effective communicator has provided me with brand new insights which I am sure will serve me, and anyone who has taken on similar challenges, well in the future.
Reach out to me on Twitter: @alexandrews61