Fouzi Lekjaa, a pillar of African football to sit on the FIFA Council

His first steps in football began as president of the RS Berkane club, a town of 100,000 inhabitants, which then vegetated in the amateur division (3rd Moroccan division). It revolutionizes the club through a vision in three axes: the improvement of the infrastructures for the team A and the regional mass football, the establishment of an efficient governance with a professional management, and finally the implementation of sustainable funding. Thus, the RS Berkane will pass in a few years from a modest club of 3rd division to major club of 1st division which fights for the title, which participates regularly in continental competitions (two CAF Cup finals including one won the year last against FC Pyramids), and which is now part of the top 10 African clubs according to the latest CAF ranking. RSB also now has one of the best training centers in the country.

In 2014, Fouzi Lekjaa became President of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation.

During his tenure, he put in place an ambitious sports policy based on three pillars.

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The first is the development of infrastructure. Fouzi Lekjaa said in an interview with journalist Alain Foka “We have more than 200 synthetic lawns in accordance with the standards, we have about twenty stadiums with natural lawns and lighting in accordance with the standards, we have a good dozen training centers of clubs which meet all the conditions, we have five regional centers , and we crowned it all with the Mohammed VI Football Complex, one of the best centers in the world that meets all standards ”.

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The second pillar concerns the governance of clubs, which has been greatly improved. Thus, the clubs must become public limited companies and are placed under the supervision of the National Direction of Control and Management. In return, the FRMF grants each first division club an annual subsidy of around 600,000 euros. Clubs participating in continental competitions benefit from financial assistance from the federation, for travel and accommodation.

Finally, the FRMF has also placed emphasis on the training of young players, likely to join professional clubs. Also, it encourages sports studies at the level of clubs and regional centers. For Fouzi Lekjaa, “Study sport is a necessity.

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The girl or the boy who plays football, they are given the opportunity to continue their education. Even when he is not a good student, he is converted to the level of vocational training to learn a trade. Young people are therefore armed with a diploma to be able to integrate another field of activity. ”

Under the leadership of Fouzi Lekjaa, Moroccan clubs won several continental titles (2017 Champions League for Wydad, 2018 CAF Cup for Raja, 2020 CAF Cup for Berkane and the 2017 and 2018 editions of the Supercup de CAF). In 2020, the four Moroccan teams entered in the Champions League and the CAF Cup achieved a clear round, all qualifying for the semi-finals, which constitutes a historic performance unique in Africa.

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The results of the national team improved markedly under Fouzi Lekjaa’s tenure: while Morocco had not crossed the first round of the CAN since 2004, he qualified for the quarter-finals in 2017 and passed the second round in 2019. In addition, Morocco managed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, 20 years after its last participation.

Morocco also won the CHAN 2018 and the CAN of Futsal 2020, both competitions having taken place at home.

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The national U20 team managed to qualify for the CAN U20 which will take place in Mauritania, which has not happened for 15 years.

It is under the leadership of Fouzi Lekjaa that the development of women’s football in Morocco. Thus, a National Women’s Football League was set up and soon after an ambitious “Marshall Plan for Women’s Football” was presented.

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The budget for women’s football has been multiplied by 6, reaching 5.8 million euros.

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The 2020/2021 season is the first professional edition of the first and second division women’s national championship, which is a major step forward for Moroccan women’s football. Players have guaranteed minimum wages and a mandatory professional contract while clubs must have full staff with professional licenses.

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The national women’s team is recruiting one of the best coaches, Reynald Pedros, double winner of the UEFA Champions League.

In addition, Morocco becomes in 2019 the first African country to use video assistance (VAR) for its first and second division league matches.

Fouzi Lekjaa has therefore contributed to significantly improving the state of Moroccan football, male and female, whether they are clubs or national teams. Vice-President of CAF and candidate for a seat on the FIFA Council in the March 2021 elections, Fouzi Lekjaa also has a clear and dispassionate vision of African football, consistent with the strategy he has implemented at the level of Moroccan football. Still at Alain Foka, he said, about infrastructure, that “Africa’s great deficit is linked to the infrastructure deficit. Our continent needs a Marshall Plan for the development of football infrastructures. This priority must be admitted. We will not be able to develop our competitions with this infrastructure, we will not be able to develop marketing in the future, everything is linked, it is a chain, we must start from the beginning ”.

“We can make a marshall plan in all countries by starting where the deficit is huge.

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The experience is there, we can do great things in two years, with funding that we can bring back, and amortize over time, over a maturity of 20-30 years from grants. I will continue to campaign for the implementation of this. FIFA can take money out on the market at zero rates, and CAF, by taking care of its image, management and governance, could also do so under almost the same conditions ”.

He also has an interesting opinion on the importance of having efficient governance within CAF: “CAF as an institution needs to strengthen its managerial capacities, to put in place real management procedures based on the achievement of objectives, transparency and clarity of procedures. It’s necessary. If we manage to improve our infrastructure investment capacities to allow us to keep the added value and export it by negotiating a return share, and if we manage to reform our management and our governance, these reforms together will allow football African not only to compete but to take a giant leap in international positioning, because the talent is there, the young people exist and the potential is enormous, we will have the right at that time to dream of an African national team in the World Cup final, and we will be able to reduce the gaps with the other confederations in a substantial way ”.

“CAF must modernize, and this concerns all aspects of governance, legal, digitalization, control, audit, good management and transparency, it is fundamental for an institution like CAF. This does not mean that today there is nothing, but CAF has unfortunately suffered too long a stagnation and we must therefore make a huge qualitative leap. Intelligence is to find the means, the procedures to make this leap without there being deep fractures ”.

Promoter of greater South-South cooperation between African countries (the FRMF has signed more than forty partnership agreements with other African federations), Fouzi Lekjaa affirms that the success of African football can only be collective and recommends pooling efforts. “We have allowed, we allow and we will allow the African national teams to come when they wish to spend internships and to take advantage of the technological developments and the performance that exists at the level of the Mohammed VI Complex because in any case because success at the level of our continent can only be collective and evolution can only be collective. ”