Women's Ball: Planted and Flowered, Harvested Gold

You don't have to be a big country in men's fields to have a high-level women's team. Of course, it is a saying that appears in several countries in Europe, Africa and Asia, but it is not fixed if it takes into account basic criteria for any success process at the level of men or women, money is necessary, infrastructure is necessary, and abundance of talent as well. But there is something that may compensate for the absence of all of these points mentioned, which is the ambition attached to insisting on learning and development through diligence to reach the desired goals, and this is what applies to the situation of Lebanon when talking about "the ball of smoothness".

The goals that were successfully achieved in women's football seem surprising compared to the conditions that accompanied the start of the Lebanese League in 2008. At that time, the number of good players was limited, and most of the features came under the banner of the Friendship Club, which enabled him to dominate the title. It is true that in that period the technical level was OK, but the general situation crossed with several basic matters, as there was not much interest in the women's football if it was in terms of weak media coverage, or by the parents who did not digest the participation of their girls in a game that stuck to men since It originated in Lebanon. Add an essential issue, which is the practice of a section of female football players as a hobby to spend quality time in the company of their friends, so players emerged with weak physical conditions, at a time when an unpleasant habit occurred, namely the withdrawal of several teams from the activity.

But it is certain that the women's team won the Arab Championship title in 2015, changing the view of the ball of pleasant sex, so there was lighting on the game and the number of teams increased despite the fact that the withdrawals did not stop, and although the team received heavy defeats in foreign matches. The negative aspects were reduced by increasing the number of training sessions for women, in addition to the qualification of the young women to the second round in the Asian Cup, which gave a moral dose and great confidence to the players, and increased the acceptance of the parents to practice their daughters to play the game.

And the aforementioned Asian station is considered an important station on the road to establishing successes, as when the national team played against teams such as Vietnam and the two Koreas, the difference appeared in the level as it faced teams training every day. This issue introduced a conviction into the minds of girls of the need to train individually to make up for the lack of infrastructure, and the lack of spaces for group exercises on a daily basis for all teams. Young girls also stormed the fields of boys in the private academies, and this contact benefited them (such as the scorer of the young women's team, Lily Iskandar who trained with the Junior Peace Team in Zgharta), in terms of giving them physical strength and exceptional experiences for the players involved in this atmosphere.

Indeed, it is the seriousness that was reflected effort, but of course with careful planning according to what is needed and what potential provides, which is explained by the first team coach for women, Wael Gherz Al-Din, who accompanied the start of the game, he says in an interview with: "We have been ahead of many teams in the process of building A minute focused on the young and talented faces. In West Asia, the average age of our team was 18.9 years, compared to 28 years for the Jordan team. At that time we participated with 15 young players and 5 from the first team, so the team ranked third. Gherz Al-Din explains the importance of girls playing with players older than them, which gave them more confidence in themselves and "they are playing under pressure and know to deal with it".

It is patience to teach girls the origins of the game and indulge in the system and achieve results, and this was present in the West Asian Championship in Bahrain, where the young women appeared aware of how to behave and move without the ball, and it seemed that the young women enjoyed a good footballing idea but with a necessary need to improve the situation physically. On this point, Gharz Al-Din explains: "Work will be taken on steps that narrow the gap with the largest continent within the capabilities. If the infrastructures are not secure, work can be done on psychological, mental and other technical aspects that raise the level of players in certain ways".

What is more certain is that the outstanding performance and the results that were celebrated by Lebanon achieving easy victories over all of its opponents in the regional championship, would have been even better if coach Hagop Demerjian had been able to implement the entire program devoted to preparations. The coach benefited from the girls ’speed in learning and the high level of the general level indicator, in parallel with the high level of clubs participating in the league that currently includes 16 teams (FIFA provides support for the Lebanese women's football, and it covers the fees of stadiums and referees), which indicates a rapid growth compared to neighboring countries. It allows teams to rely on only one foreign player to give local players an opportunity to play the largest number of matches and benefit from friction, a matter that is accepted by most clubs that often bring in a foreigner in the second leg or in the "Final Four" stage exclusively.

"We have made up for the lack of time to prepare by quickly absorbing girls towards what is required of them, and their cooperation has been extremely beneficial", Demirjian said in an interview with Al-Akhbar. He continued: "I do not hide if I said that our level compared to the rest of our competitors was the best, but the irony is that all these teams were prepared better through internal and external camps and international friendly matches, while our games were limited to two meetings, one with a local team and another with a youth team from Without the full duration of the two games because we got on the field for an hour and a half to warm up and play the game".

As for what gave preference to his team, he says: “It is the method that I described as ‘Ali Al-Libani’, which does not mean that we played randomly or invented something new. But the commitment to the plan was the distinguishing mark from the rest of the teams, and it was possible to implement it through the higher thought of girls Who found the ball from goalkeeper to attack smoothly, and this description appeared in the match, where they scored a goal this way.

So, women's football is on the right path if she attends to her care in a way that corresponds to the efforts made by her players, and they who may find a number of them are the path towards professionalism if they keep on the path of development, and if they find serious interest in the game and the guarantor of not pushing them to despair but rather to Work hard more.