Shireen Ahmed:
I mean, I was very lucky to be in Qatar for Morocco playing Canada.
And I can tell you, John, I have loved football for decades. I have never seen such exuberant fans, even to the point of, usually, Mexican fans are their most emphatic. I have never seen fans like this before. And it was — it was a treat to be. It wasn't even the adapted vuvuzelas or the whistling or the cheering or the flag waving. It was the heart.
And Morocco went out and left their heart and everything they had on the pitch, but their fans and their communities and their families were holding them. And we haven't seen that.
We like to think that we know a lot about football, but what Morocco showed us, particularly, was how community is really important, family is really important, and not just like dancing with your mama on the pitch, just how they were inviting everyone to witness this joy, particularly when this is such a masculine sport, and just to show how important their mental health and emotional health was.
I think that leads into a greater conversation and one that's really important. I — well, they will be dearly missed in the next — in the final. I would have loved to see the final, but they're playing for third place too. Let's not forget, they will face Croatia. And Luka Modric is an incredible player as well.
And that's not going to be an easy, easy match. But I think they have earned a lot of respect too. And this part of — that part of the world, North Africa, is often dismissed. And a lot of people don't know that the women's team in Morocco has qualified for the first women's World Cup. So football is certainly growing there.
And, very often, we dismiss certain places in the world. But we truly have seen that this is the world's game. The beautiful game is the people's game.
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