Known internationally for its passionate fans, Wydad AC symbolises a novel way of resistance. The Moroccan club was to be founded in 1937 by Mohammed Benjeloun and Mohammed Belhassan. These two prominent symbols, of Moroccan resistance against the French, anticipated that the sportive entity would expand to etch heroic events in the annals of history.
Wydad denotes amiability, affability, and friendliness. It also connotes the title of Egyptian character Oum Kalthoum’s film, which Wydad’s two founders watched when thinking of a name for their nascent club. Later, they decided that it was the name they had been looking for and the one that most echoes the club’s raison d’être.
The Moroccan giants were to rebel against colonial France and its hegemony over the Moroccan league. This was through playing with a purely Moroccan squad in a football competition held in Algeria, prompting France’s rage and leaving it with no choice but to attack the club and its supporters’ base.
Nonetheless, the group persisted in espousing the values of freedom and liberty. The French colonial powers further uncovered Wydad’s support for the Moroccan resistance; ergo, they halted the club’s activities for one year.
‘’We were not watching Wydad’s football matches, merely for fun, we were there for a lesson in patriotism,’’ states the Moroccan thinker Mehdi Mengera. Indeed, the club hitherto maintains clenching the title of ‘’the Nation’s Wydad’’, alluding to its attachment to defending liberties and fair noble causes throughout the MENA region.
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