Reading the press, listening to the commentaries, processing it all into pieces that argue for a different vantage point. That work has produced almost seventy articles. It has taught me how I think about football. It also questions a certain limit.
There is a category of journalism this format might not do well. The interview where the player says something unguarded. The quote that has not yet been condensed by a wire service. The pre-match noise of a stadium filling. The texture of a press conference that a transcript cannot carry. The post-match silence. The voices the European press never asks because the European press never goes to where those voices live. None of this is available from a desk in Khenchela.
So the next phase of the project starts moving. Field reporting. Interviews where I do the asking. Conversations with players, coaches, fans, federation people, anyone who knows something the press has not gotten on the record yet. Building the contacts that turn this from one person's reading of the football into one person's reporting on it.
This is not a pivot. The angle stays the same. What changes is the kind of material the writing has to draw on. A piece about how Arabic commentary received the AFCON final is sharper when you were in the room where the commentary was called. A profile of an overlooked North African midfielder is sharper when the midfielder is on the record. A tactical preview is sharper when the coach has spoken to you, even briefly.
I am also aware of what this requires. Access and travel. Time off from the dissertation and from the day. None of it is automatic, none of it is quick. But the path is clear. What expands is the range of voices it can carry.
If you write about football and only write what you read, you are at best the second person to know anything. I have done that for almost two years. Time to be the first.