Tunisia’s defeat did not only end a sporting journey. She opened, almost in spite of herself, a wider debate, triggered by a hot statement from Hannibal Mejbri. A raw, straightforward statement that immediately went beyond the scope of football.
âWe dream too much, we donât work enough. » The sentence struck, sometimes shocked. But above all she hit the nail on the head. Because it did not target an opponent, nor a referee, nor even a specific sporting system. She pointed to something else: a collective relationship to effort, to long-term, to learning.
âWe dream too much, we donât work enoughâ, Hannibal Mejbri
Football, at this precise moment, played its usual role of revealer. What remains tolerable in other areas suddenly becomes visible when the stakes are immediate, when the result is binary, when failure cannot be disguised. The terrain then acts as a magnifying mirror of broader dysfunctions.
What is striking in Hannibal Mejbri’s declaration is less the severity of the observation than its scope. By including himself in the criticism â âme firstâ â the player avoids the pitfall of lecturing and transforms his remarks into a collective questioning. Players, media, institutions, citizens: no one is placed above.
This is undoubtedly why this release is perceived as a wake-up call. Not an accusation, but an alarm. Not a rejection, but an invitation to ask the right questions, in sport as elsewhere. Training, method, demands, culture of effort: words rarely put forward in the euphoria of speeches, but essential in the long term.
It now remains to be seen what Tunisian society will do with this word. Forget it as a post-match emotional reaction, or hear it as a faint but persistent signal, coming from a football field, but addressed far beyond.
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