If a player featured just 38 times for a club, you wouldn’t expect them to have established that much of a lasting relationship. That’s rarely the case when talking about Fulham Football Club, though…
Abdeslam Ouaddou arrived in SW6 – having rejected the likes of Arsenal and Monaco – as an enthusiastic 22-year-old just after we had won promotion to the Premier League. He never got the run of games he would have liked, but that did little to temper the love affair that was quickly forged with his new club.
“My dream was always to try and succeed in England, because I loved the Premier League, I loved London,” Abdes recalls. “I used to visit with my college when I was young, I went maybe five times, and I was in love with this city, with this country. I loved the English language.
“I knew it would not be easy to play straight away, because the Premier League has more pace, more great players, than the French league. Also, we had very good, experienced players, like Andy Melville, a Welsh international, Kit Symons, Alain Goma, and the second year we had Martin Djetou. All these players were more experienced than me in my position of central defender.
“But when we choose such a challenge, we know that it will not be easy. In my head I was ready to work hard in order to make appearances with Fulham. Jean Tigana told me I would have more chances to play as a right-back. It was okay, I was at the service of the Club. I really wanted to improve and I thank Fulham because even though I was not a regular player, I can say that these two years in Fulham gave me a lot of experience and I improved a lot.
“More than football, I can say that I have a link still now with people in London, Fulham especially, because this Club still has all the love in my heart. I still visit every year. Every year I come to London to see my teammates or people who work at the Club; Carmelo [Mifsud, Communications Director], Mark Maunders [Player Liaison Manager]. All these people were very important to me.
“I had a lot of friends. I was close with a lot of the French guys because of the language; Alain Goma, Louis Saha, Luis Boa Morte because he spoke French as well, but I didn’t only have a few friends, I had a lot of friends. People like Sean Davis who I’m still in contact with, I spoke with him the other week, John Collins I still speak with on the phone, Kit Symons... it was like a family. It was not groups of friends, it was a big family.
“That human side of it is very important. It’s something that never happened after in my career, the feeling I had in that Club, the feeling I had with the fans, even though I was not a regular, the fans had a lot of respect, and I had a lot of respect for them. The people from the Club, they were very close to us. If we needed something, they were here for us to help us. This is very important for me; when you respect the player, when you respect the man as a human. It is something that I will never, never forget in my life.
“I played in other clubs and I didn’t find the same respect as Fulham. It was unique in my career. The only place where it was similar was Olympiakos – I didn’t stay a long time there either but, paradoxically, those are the clubs where people gave me more love. I will never forget that. I played regularly with Rennes, maybe 100 games, I played regularly with Nancy, I played regularly with Valenciennes, I played maybe 400 games in my career, but it’s at Fulham and Olympiakos that I received the most love from people.”
For a young defender, there can’t be many better mentors than Chris Coleman. The Club Captain was continuing his rehab from a devastating car accident when Ouaddou first arrived, and he immediately became a role model for the youngster.
“He gave me a lot of advice. When I was a substitute with the First Team, I would play games with the reserve team, and that was the time when Cookie was starting to recover from his injury. He played with us in the reserve team, and he gave me a lot of advice, in terms of position, in terms of leadership. He told me that if I want to improve in that position then I need to be more of a leader, because you need to speak more as a central defender. He was close to us if we needed something, a very experienced guy, and I am not surprised that he became a fantastic coach with Wales.
“I was not a regular but I learnt a lot from all the players; from Cookie, Alain Goma, Andy Melville, John Collins, who is just a fantastic guy. We had a lot of very talented players, like Edwin van der Sar – this guy played for Ajax, Juventus, and when you spoke with these guys for one or two hours, it’s something unbelievable. You train with them and so you learn. You watch, train and play with them, so it’s logical that you will improve.”
Like all of us, visiting Craven Cottage is now one of Abdes’ favourite pastimes, and he tries to make sure he takes in at least one home game a season.
“I enjoy it so much,” he says. “When I am in the stand, I can remember my time there and it’s like I never left Fulham. When I’m in the stand, when I’m speaking with the fans... I played two or three times in the charity games, and it’s like I never left. I bring my son, who is now 18 years old – at that time when I was playing for the Club my wife was pregnant – and he’s now become a Fulham fan too.”
The joy Ouaddou experienced at Fulham is in almost unbelievable contrast to what happened at the end of his career.
A new challenge presented itself in Qatar. It started brilliantly for Abdes as he captained Al-Duhail SC to the domestic title, but his Middle Eastern adventure soon turned into a nightmare.
“[Al-Duhail] wanted to build a strong team because they’d come up from the second division, and this was the team of Sheikh Tamim bin al-Thani, who is now Emir [head of state] of Qatar. At the time he was Prince, but now he’s the Emir. It was his club and he wanted to build a strong team to go and win the Asian Cup. It was a project and they came to Nancy in a private jet to sign me, because they wanted an international Moroccan player, captain of the national team.
“To be honest, at that time, what I saw of Qatar was a wonderful country, a democratic country, that’s what I could see on the TV. I didn’t take the time to get some advice about the system there, nothing. I went there and signed. The first year was exciting because we were champions and I was captain of this team. Everything was going well, until the second year. The board told me that I had to change club. I was very, very, very surprised, because I’d signed a three year contract, and after the first year they were asking me to change club. I didn’t understand. They pushed me and put me under pressure to sign for Qatar Sport Club, another club in the family.
“So I moved, but when I played with Sport Club we had a very bad season, and they asked me to resign in exchange of two months’ salary. I still had a year left on my contract, but they wanted to sack me. They told me that the season wasn’t good enough. They told me to accept two months’ salary. I did not agree with that because I still had a contract. I told them to maybe give me a loan or transfer me to another club, so they stopped paying me! They stopped paying my rent, they took away my car – this BMW that I negotiated in my contract – so that I couldn’t get to training. If I missed training then that would be something for them to use in court. When they took my car, in the same day I went and bought a Porsche Cayenne so that I could go to training. Their strategy at that time was to keep me in Qatar and let me keep spending my own money until I accepted their deal.”
Now living in a hotel, not receiving any wages, Ouaddou needed to get his family out of Qatar. But a legal system rife with red tape meant that was easier said than done. It wasn’t about money for Abdes, though, it was about rights.
“With this kafala system, with my French passport, I could not leave the country, because you need an exit visa,” he explains. “And to get an exit visa you need authorisation from your employer, and of course they didn’t want to give it to me. I was blocked, I was stuck with my family in that country. And what is the strategy? The strategy is to stay in Qatar until I didn’t have enough money to live, and be forced to accept their deal. But I didn’t have a problem with money, I just wanted them to respect my rights and respect the contract that we had signed. They didn’t want to give me the exit visa to go back to France. I opened a case with FIFA, and after several months FIFA wrote to the club to tell them to respect the contract. They were very upset, they took me off the players' federation list, I was not allowed to train with the team, just with one coach in the 50 degree heat, for several months.
“I started to speak about the situation. I spoke to CNN and the BBC – thank you to them, because the French media didn’t want to speak about this case because they had commercial business with Qatar. It’s because of CNN and the BBC that I was able to get out of the country. They spoke about this case, they spoke about respecting human beings, and after that they started to make some noise about this situation, about a football player stuck in Qatar with his family, not being paid. This story started to make big noise, big, big noise in Qatar and across the world, especially in France, England and America. Then the club came to me and gave me the exit visa, told me I have 24 hours to leave the country and that they didn’t want to see me there anymore. I asked them why and they said it was because I had made too much noise and with them hosting the World Cup in 2022, they didn’t want a bad image.”
With his freedom now won, Ouaddou wasn’t finished, such was the strength of his feeling about how the country was operating.
“I went to France and I continued to sue them through FIFA,” he says. “I joined the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), to help the other people stuck there and to talk about the workers’ rights in Qatar. We started to make a campaign to rerun the [World Cup] vote. We had a very fantastic campaign, and we were invited to congress in Washington, America, to speak about this case and to speak about people who are stuck in Qatar. I know there are a lot of English and French people, not in football but in other companies, who are stuck there. It was very difficult but after maybe five years we heard that the Qatar government changed the law, and now I think there is not any more kafala and they respect the workers’ rights a little bit.
“It was never a question of money, my target was just for them to learn that they cannot buy people. You have to respect human beings. I wanted to show them that a small guy like me can win a case like this. They used to buy everything because they have a lot of money, this is the problem. We fought with the ITUC for the workers, not only for the footballers. Most of the workers, the Sri Lankan, Philippine, Asian people, when they come to work in Qatar, they cannot go to see their family, they cannot open a bank account, they cannot have their own house. The workers often lived with 50 of them in a very small square meterage. When you see the conditions they are working in… they are building stadiums in 50 degree heat. When you know that hundreds and hundreds of people lost their lives… I wanted to use my case to help. That’s what I did for several years, and we are proud of that because we put pressure on that government and we pushed them to change the law for the workers.
“After the case, people asked me if I was happy that I won my money back, but that was never my target. I just wanted to speak about the tragic, tragic conditions of the workers in Qatar. It’s like slavery. You don’t have to be afraid of using that word. It was modern slavery. I hope things have improved now a little bit after the government changed the law. Thank you to this Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin al-Thani; he’s young, he lived abroad and he respects human rights a lot. He changed everything, and we have to congratulate him for that, but sometimes we can see that tragedy still goes on in this area.”
Life resembles normality again for Abdes, who now has a Masters degree in sport management and is currently working towards his UEFA Pro Licence. Back at his former club Nancy, he’s charged with guiding the club’s youngsters. With all he’s been through, there are no prizes for guessing what his coaching philosophy entails.
“I want to try to develop players with values, human values,” he details. “That’s very important for me, and it can be more important than football. Like I say to the players, if you build yourself without values, you cannot succeed in football. You have to be honest, you have to respect people, you have to work hard, you have to be helpful, you have to respect your teachers, you have to respect your coaches and the people around you. I told them that in my time I had seen a lot of great players who did not have any values, and therefore did not succeed. I saw a lot of players who were technically geniuses, who were physically top, but they didn’t have any values, they were not professional, they did not respect or help people. In football you need solidarity, you need integrity. I think to succeed in sport you need to have very, very important human values. This is what I found at Fulham, they have very, very, very strong values, and it’s why I am in love with this Club.”
