Boletín 101 - Achraf Hakimi, Marruecos y el racismo en internet.
Boletín 101 - Achraf Hakimi, Marruecos y el racismo en internet.
The penalty which Hakimi is about to score will knock Spain out of the World Cup, lead Morocco to a 4th place finish and win the hearts of most neutrals along the way.
👋Welcome to Boletín, an English-language newsletter covering historical, cultural and topical stories related to the A Level Spanish course. These newsletters accompany a student worksheet which can be downloaded here.
📌Edition 101
Apologies if you're not into your football but after the unexpected Morocco victory against Spain this edition wrote itself with so many topics at play. La influencia de los ídolos, la convivencia y la inmigración.
I did say last week I had 101 already made and that it was about famous Spanish landmarks but that will now be released next week.
Text one about la familia Hakimi is a mix of two sources here and here.
Text two about Morocco was written by myself.
Text three about racist/islamophobic comments online is also by myself.
Walid Regragui, the manager of Morocco, had been getting some stick. Off the back of a record-breaking CAF Champions League campaign with Wydad AC (most goals scored in a single season, most wins for a Moroccan team and first Moroccan team to go undefeated for 9 straight games) he accepted the Morocccan national team job.
The inclusion of so many non-Morroccan born players in the national team had recieved a lot of criticism. Walid hoped his decision would be vindicated.
24 year-old Achraf Hakimi is one of those foreign-born players and his is an incredible success story.
Achraf Hakimi is a Madrid-born right-back who currently plays for PSG alongside Messi, Mbappé, Neymar and Sergio Ramos (controversially left out of the Spanish World Cup selection). Hakimi recieved his football education in the Real Madrid youth system before being promoted to the first team and debuting for los blancos in 2016.
Despite having been born in Madrid, Hakimi opted to represent Morocco's national team. He could do this because both his parents are Moroccan.
He is a practising Muslim who speaks Arabic at home and enjoyed his mothers’s Moroccan inspired cooking growing up. As a youngster he nearly selected Spain as his national team but admitted to not feeling at home when looking around their facilities.
Morrocan Spanish relations are politically, historically and socially fraught.
During my year living in Spain I would often hear racist remarks directed towards Moroccans.
Spain vs Morroco then in the Round of 16 promised to be more than a football game. The two teams had met three times before drawing 2-2 in 2018 with Spain winning twice in 1961.
On 6th December Morocco were vying to become only the fourth African team in history to reach the Quarter Finals of the World Cup. Spain knew that they had to win. Defeat was out of the question.
The fourth game ended 0-0 after extra time. Penalties it was.
First up is Sarabia hits the post (the only reason he was substituted on was to take a penalty) and the next two Spanish penalties are saved by the Canada-born Bono. Spain have missed their first three penalties and are on the verge of elimination.
Achraf Hakimi now walks to the spot.
If he scores then Morocco progress and he sends home the team whose country's capital he was born in and whose former captain, Sergio Ramos, he plays club football with week in week out.
With ice in his veins, not succumbing to the pressure, Hakimi places the ball on the spot and glances breifly at Unai Simón between the sticks.
Hakimi takes a run up and delivers the most audacious of penalties you can imagine. A panenka. Spain are out. Morocco go through and then beat Portugal in the quarter finals to become the first African team to reach a World Cup semi-final. Hakimi and his team have now sent home Spain and have ended Ronaldo’s quest for a World Cup trophy.
What was first thought of as a celebration to rub salt in Spanish wounds after scoring, the penquin dance, turned out to be a homage to Sergio Ramos who Hakimi deeply respects.
🔍Grammar to look out for
Preterite tense regular verbs
Preterite tense irregular verbs
The imperfect tense
The present perfect (he/has/ha/hemos/han/habeis + past participle)
The past perfect (había + past participle)
Avoiding the passive with an se structure
Apocopated adjectives
The personal a (when a direct object is a person or a pet)
The gerund (ing verbs)
🧠A level structures
In this edition one of the most common A Level verbs crops up. That verb is convertirse which means to become.
To conjugate this verb you start with the correct pronoun from me, te, se, nos, os, se and then you conjugae the verb convertir (careful as it is irregular).
Look out for it in the third text and notice how it is conjugated in the past tense in the they form to agree with the subject of las palabras.
Download edition 101 here.
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Ollie