Gender-Based Violence
The second of my weekly short summaries about the culture and politics of football.
• Achraf Hakimi is the captain of Morocco’s national team. He plays right-back for Paris Saint Germain. He makes about $215,000 a week and has an estimated fortune of $70 million. At the end of February, he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in his apartment in Paris. His wife, who was away at the time, announced that she was divorcing him. This week, it emerged in divorce court that Hakimi had registered his fortune, including his salary, under his mother’s name, thus denying his wife, who is also the mother of his two children, any part of his fortune or future income. In what has been particularly jarring, this latest act by Hakimi is celebrated as heroic and genius by that corner of the internet that counts Andrew Tate and the late Kevin Samuels as their heroes. To “influencers” like Tate and Samuels and their admirers, women are to blame for all men’s problems and selfish acts like this of Hakimi are celebrated. On podcasts and in tweets, Hakimi was declared as “smart with his money,” “a hero” and having a “3,000 IQ.” He is "Man of the Year." It was if the rape accusation never happened. It has been a misogynist mess.
As business strategist and writer Itumeleng Mahabane points out to me:
Beyond its celebration of misogyny, the irony of this celebration of cunning manhood is that it is a celebration of weakness, a celebration of lack of agency, a celebration of conformity. In the end, Hakimi lacked the courage to chart his own path, to reject what he perceived as a broken institution. Instead, he demonstrated fundamentally fraudulent values and treated his children with contempt by reducing their mother to a global symbol of the caricature of misogynistic men.
• The Algerian journalist Maher Mezahi published a Twitter thread about how French football authorities, clubs and coaches openly discriminate against fasting Muslim players during Ramadan. This includes warning players who asked for play to stop so they can break their fast, that they are breaking match rules; some teams “completely discarded (players) from the squad on match days because they decided to fast;” and coaches ridiculing players ("if fasting improved performance, I think many teams that would do it”). The best response comes from PSG supporters in a banner from the stands: “A date and a glass of water is the FFF’s nightmare.” French players who play elsewhere in Europe are not surprised. This is France after all. Read the thread here. Muslims around the world, including in France, celebrate Eid this coming Friday.
• Around the same time, current PSG coach Christoph Galtier was accused of making racist remarks about black and Muslim players when he was OCG Nice coach in the 2021-2022 season. This included sidelining players because they observed Ramadan, but also saying the team had too many black and Muslim players. At one point, Galtier’s son, John, apparently told the club’s sporting director: “Last night I went to a restaurant (in Nice) and everyone stopped me. They said that we have a team of blacks … You must realize in which city we are. We are in the city of Jacques Médecin and our team does not correspond to what people want, just as it does not correspond to me.” A quick search will show that Médecin was mayor of Nice between the late 1960s and 1990 and was an open racist and far-right politician. (He referred to Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front, as "a friend.") Médecin served in France’s colonial army and was part of a paramilitary group that committed terrorist acts to prevent Algerian independence. He also openly supported apartheid South Africa. In 2011, a tape emerged where then men’s national team coach, Laurent Blanc (teammate of Lilian Thuram and Zinedine Zidane in the 1998 World Cup) said there were too many black and Arab footballers in the academies that feed the national team. He wanted to cap their participation at 30 percent. Zidane said he wasn't a racist. That ended that.
• The latest print issue of Jacobin Magazine has a short piece on how in Israel, “… the most proudly racist team comes out on top.” It focuses on Beitar Jerusalem, the team supported by current Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his son, Avner. An excerpt: “Beitar fans — especially ones associated with the group La Familia — have been involved in terrorist violence against Palestinians as well as against their own team’s players and owners. In the 2012–13 season, when Beitar fans protested the addition of two Muslim Chechen players to its squad, La Familia sent death threats to the captain. They later burned down the club’s training ground.” Beitar claims the support of “second Israel”: “of more religious Sephardic Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent.” “First Israel” is “… the dominant class of largely European-descended Jews who formed the country’s economic and governing elites.” Their club is Hapoel Tel Aviv. Anyway, “(t)he dichotomy between “two Israels” makes no mention of Palestine or the Palestinian citizens of the country …”