It’s the semi-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations on Wednesday as Senegal face Egypt and Nigeria take on hosts Morocco. I was fortunate to see Senegal and Nigeria last week, two teams with big followings in Morocco. But it’s all about Morocco – the country comes alive when live football is on, as we found out in Tangier after Senegal defeated Mali on Friday. Every bar was full, the occupants almost entirely male. I wondered how the establishments survived financially, given that most of the customers weren’t buying any food or drinks.
Morocco, Africa’s highest-ranked country and semi-finalists at the last World Cup in Qatar, have only been continental champions once. With elite players throughout their team, they are favourites to go all the way on home soil.
I left Tangier for the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Saturday morning, intending to take a shared taxi as I’d done in Tunisia last year. But after checking the price on the InDrive app it was only €20 for the 90-minute drive. A guard at the hotel told me it was illegal and that I shouldn’t be using the app. But everyone I’d met in Morocco was using it.
My driver came in a battered old car and shook his head when I tried to put a seatbelt on. He said he could speak English, but could not speak English. He did list some English gambling companies, though, nodding positively as he did. Then he asked me to predict the scores of games so that he could gamble on them. I politely declined and he dropped me off by the border gates – a piece of Africa where it meets the European community on African soil. It took an hour to get through and into Ceuta where we met former Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspur and Real Zaragoza midfielder Nayim.
The following morning, I was up early to get a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Algeciras. It was full, mainly of soldiers since Ceuta has a large Spanish military base, as well as football fans going to see AD Ceuta away to Malaga. I was struck by how young the soldiers looked in their civilian clothes.
The Rock of Gibraltar soon came into view, a British Overseas Territory, just as Ceuta is for Spain on the other side, before docking at Algeciras, one of Europe’s largest ports. Algeciras does not have the best reputation in Spain, a country where 90 per cent of the towns and cities are worth a visit and boast beautiful and historic centres. I’ve been to most in Spain and can count on one hand the ones which are not worth a visit, the football town Villarreal being one.
Algeciras have a team in the regional Spanish third tier, yet regional implies limited travel. The reality is that they play away games against teams in Barcelona, 1,050 kilometres away and 12 hours of driving. Or Ibiza, which requires flights. The travel is a significant strain on the finances of a club which attracts around 3,000 supporters on a good day. Tenerife to Galicia is a three-hour flight with a change in Madrid. Yet when games are close, the third-tier crowds can be huge. Hercules of Alicante took 5,000 fans to nearby Murcia on Sunday evening.
I didn’t linger long in Algeciras, but took a train for only €11, which bought a two-hour ride through green mountains and fast-flowing streams to the stunning town of Ronda, its white buildings astride a gorge. The single-track railway was built in only two years in 1890 by the Algeciras Gibraltar rail company and enabled British military officers to escape Gibraltar’s summer heat.
American writers Ernest Hemmingway and Orson Welles stayed in Ronda, while another writer, Richard Ford, has his description of Ronda on the walls of a building close to the famous bridge that spans the gorge: “The giant element leaps with delirious bound from rock to rock, until at last, broken and buffeted, and weary from driving the numberless wheels, it subsides into a gentle stream, which steals like happiness away, down a verdurous valley of fruit and flowers.”
It’s only 22 miles from the beaches of the Costa del Sol Mediterranean summer fleshpots, but a world away.
I received a message from one Premier League manager, who had noted that I was something of a curse on managers: I’d been at Celtic v Rangers (the Celtic manager was dismissed after a 3-1 defeat) and Leeds United v Manchester United (Ruben Amorim was gone soon after).
“Do not come and watch my team,” was the instruction.
I spoke to some of those around about the vacant Manchester United’s job. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who had just recovered from flu, was pleased with how talks had gone with United on Saturday and spoke well of Jason Wilcox and Omar Berrada, the club's director of football and chief executive, as well as the other candidates for the job, his close friends Michael Carrick and Ruud van Nistelrooy.
United met with Carrick and Solskjaer, while they already knew Van Nistelrooy from his time at the club last year. United believed there were three good candidates who knew the club well. On Tuesday, the club appointed former United midfielder Carrick as interim manager until the end of the season.
I tried to find a place to watch Manchester United v Brighton on TV but the game wasn’t being broadcast in Spain, sparing any United fans more agony as their team was eliminated from yet another cup competition at the first hurdle.
One match you couldn't escape was Barcelona and Real Madrid in the Spanish Super Cup final, a stormer of a match being played in Jeddah. Barcelona won 3-2, and yet another manager was gone as Xabi Alonso parted ways with Real.
For the record, I wasn’t there in person. In Jeddah, he had instructed his players to form a guard of honour for the victorious Barcelona players, yet was immediately undermined as Kylian Mbappe waved his Madrid teammates off to the dressing room instead. No guard of honour then and clearly no respect for Alonso’s authority. Player power is a major problem at Real Madrid, the most political of football clubs. Alonso is an exceptional coach.
As there was a lull in the action at Afcon I headed north again. Spain has the best high-speed rail network in Europe and I arrived at Antequera Santa Ana station for a train to Zaragoza. I checked the departure time and waited before attempting to board, when my ticket was declined.
“Your train is from the other Antequera station,” said the official 10 minutes before the train was due to leave. “That’s 20 kilometres away.”
I wasn’t alone. Other passengers were in the same position and stood flustered holding tickets for a train that left 20 kilometres away in eight minutes.
“Yes, there’s confusion every day,” said an official about the two trains going to the same place at the same time from either side of a town of the same name. Thankfully, a new ticket for the new train was issued without charge with two minutes to spare.
And onto Zaragoza, the final stop of this journey. I’d been in contact with Zaragoza’s coach Ruben Selles about meeting and he was up for it before a family commitment took over. I was intrigued how Zaragoza, a giant of a team from Spain’s fourth biggest city of 600,000, had floundered for 15 years in the second tier. Indeed, they are bottom of the second division and playing in a temporary home while their Romareda stadium is being rebuilt and will be used for the 2030 World Cup finals.
And then on Sunday, something strange happened. Bottom-of-the-table Zaragoza went away to top-of-the-table Racing Santander and won 3-2.
I’ll be watching the end of the Afcon tournament on TV rather than in the stadiums, but Morocco has shown that it can stage a top-level football competition, with some of the best stadiums on the planet.
