The football club whose players left to seek a better life in Europe

If Ghardimaou football club’s players had been there to take to the pitch last month, the Tunisian town’s stadium would have been packed with fans, waving the teams’s blue and white colours

- Lorenzo Tondo and Marta Bellingreri

The club, which plays in the fourth division of the national league, was due to face the third-placed El Battan. It would not have been an easy game but Ghardimaou FC’s president, Jamil Meftahi, believes his players could have won.

The match did not take place. The club has all but ceased to exist after more than 30 of its players left the country, trying, like thousands of their compatriots, to reach Europe.

Sitting in a town centre cafe, Meftahi, an ex-player himself, scrolls through a four-page document listing the names of his former squad.

“In the last five years, we have lost 65 players,” he said. “Thirty-one since the last season and 14 since the start of the new year.” In March, he took the difficult but unavoidable decision to stop playing.

In 2022 alone, about 15,500 Tunisians reached the Italian coast, according to an advocacy group, Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES). The exodus has been blamed by human rights groups on the North African country’s high unemployment, rising inflation, financial stress and political instability.