Soufiane Touzani is on a mission: he wants to give the football courts their old-fashioned glory again. In the past, when the 34-year-old street footballer himself was still a child, the concrete field felt like a kind of stadium where was always busy. Losing usually meant waiting at least an hour and the tension was to die for. In the interview program Leaders Touzani told me Football zone already about his ambitious project FC Street, the largest (online) football club in the Netherlands. He has now expanded this with his new concept Street Captains, in which both the squares and the talk play a major role.
By Justus Dingemanse
“The Netherlands has a wonderful sports infrastructure. Nowhere else are so many beautifully landscaped squares and fields as here, but the lifestyle of the youth has changed ”, he begins his argument. “Social media, FIFA, Fortnite and YouTube, I am of course not against it, but the squares too often remain empty. There is a lot of urgency missing. ” He himself has one of the most successful YouTube channels in the Netherlands with Touzani TV, but he saw in the corona period that interest in football declined somewhat. With his new concept, however, the attention is completely back: “You really don’t want to know how well the videos score! They are all going viral, we did not expect this extreme success. ”
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With FC Street he built an online platform for youth that revolves around nutrition, training and relaxation. By joining for free, members receive exclusive videos with tips in these areas. But something extra was needed to achieve his goal: “I want to try to get young and old to play football on the street for an extra four hours a week. Then footballing the Netherlands will get better. That is why we started an online competition: Street Captains. The concept is simple: five players with a captain armband who stay in position until they are defeated and who have to put the band around the arm of five new players. ”
The excitement of the square is mixed with elements from the UFC. “To encourage the competition and increase the tension, we start with a press conference. Then we let them challenge each other a bit before they start playing. We have an adult league, boys under-13 and under-15, and girls under-13. We now receive one hundred to one thousand requests a day. Members from all over the country want to be the challenger! ” Influencer Summer de Snow and Lina Touzani (what’s in a name?), Among others, are causing a furore among the young girls, which causes a lot of attention among the young audience. But the big names from national football are also enthusiastic.
“Real soccer players know this is the shit. I have already received videos from Sneijder and Van Persie and I know that Frenkie watches every episode. They come from the squares themselves and find it hard. The locations where the games are played, such as in the STRAAT Museum in Amsterdam, on the SS Rotterdam and under the Van Brienenoord Bridge, also help ”, says Touzani. The next step is a ‘credible’ competition where members can qualify in squares across the country. “From there the ‘road to the finals’ arises and of course you understand that I ultimately want to go to a street football zone!”, He concludes with a laugh.
Justus Dingemanse is a full-time presenter and program maker at Voetbalzone and makes contributions in the form of exclusive interviews, reports, documentaries and programs.