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Manila has been hit by tropical thunderstorms this week. The first FIFA Futsal Women’s World Cup™ was fortunately unaffected. PhilSports Arena, after all, is a fully-roofed, climate-protected venue.
At 8:06pm, however, cleaners rushed to mop up the soaked court. It was caused not by rain but by human tears. Fourteen Moroccans were in floods of them. They had just slain Poland and reached the quarter-finals.
“Sorry, sorry,” apologised Chaymaa Mourtaji as she cried uncontrollably. After struggling to get her words out for a couple of minutes, the 29-year-old managed to pull herself together.
“This is one of the happiest moments of my life,” Mourtaji told FIFA. “I played in two Champions League finals in football, but this is different, it’s for the national team.
“If you asked me to represent Morocco at anything, I’d do it. If you asked me to play tennis for Morocco, I’d do it and give it everything. Representing this nation is indescribable. It gives you immense pride.
“We played a lot of friendly matches against big teams like Spain, Brazil, Italy. We lost them all, but we learned our lessons. Today we showed the lessons we learned. Our coach is amazing, he’s taught us everything. I cannot thank him enough.
“We’ve qualified for the quarter-finals. We are so, so happy. We did it for the nation, we did it for our parents, we did it for everyone who supports us. It’s now Morocco’s time. Not only for the boys but the girls too.”
“It’s absolutely incredible,” added Tahri Hajar. “This is one of the happiest moments of my life. It’s not that we didn’t expect it. We knew we were better than them. We knew that if we gave it everything we had, we’d win, and that’s what we did. I’m so, so proud of the girls.
“We have amazing spirit in the squad. We pray together, we talk all the time, we believe together. We’re among the best eight teams in the world and it feels unbelievable.”
Mourtaji also lauded the squad spirit: “We are like a big family. Us players are sisters. The backroom staff are like our brothers. The coaches are like our fathers. We learn from each other, we respect each other, we love each other.”
Adil Sayeh’s side will now play Spain, who sit second on the FIFA Futsal Women’s World Ranking, in the last eight on Monday.
“Spain are a great team,” said Mourtaji. “We have a lot of respect for them. I think we’ve played them five times. They were really difficult games, they beat us. But I can promise you that we are better than the last time we played them. You can do anything if you believe.”
Hajar commented: “We’ve played against them, we know how they play. They’re obviously a really strong team with really good players, but we’re going to focus on ourselves. When we’re on our game, we believe we can beat anyone. We’ve beaten one European team today and now we’ll go out to beat another.”
