The bill on the vaccine pass has been examined by the Senate since Monday. Let us dwell on the question of minors over 16 years old. If the project goes as it is, in mid-January, adolescents over 16 years old will have to present a vaccination pass in order to continue their sporting activity. Kamel Ferrag is serious. He chairs an institution in Marseille: the training club ofAS Mazargues in the 9th arrondissement of Marseille. More than 500 licensees and kids who come from all quarters. The future vaccination pass will reach around a hundred kids, including more than half are not vaccinated. The U18s, but not only. The president fears the worst. “When they come three or four evenings a week and on Saturdays for the matches, they are not elsewhere. There, they will be forced to stop football. We will find them in the street. And maybe in the news” .
We are sacrificing a generation
If Kamel Ferrag is so pessimistic, it is because he knows them well, his “children” as he calls them: often divorced families, little up to date with vaccine procedures. Young people have for only setting the lawn of Mazargues. And some, rebels, refuse any vaccine. “If they quit, they won’t come back. They are school dropouts. Now they will drop out of football. Even those who want to will not have their full immunization schedule by mid January.” Until now, AS Mazargues tested its young people every weekend, before the matches, thanks to volunteer nurses. Thanks to these tests, the club maintained its activities which we will have understood that they are as much social as sporting. Let it be clear: Kamel Ferrag is not hostile to the vaccine. He is only a man of the field who sees the consequences to come on a whole fringe of the youth of Marseille. Many clubs have dropped the deal on the U18s. Unstable category, too complicated to manage, on and around the field. A priesthood. An educational duty. The balances are already difficult enough to preserve. Mazargues maintained against all odds this category of almost adult adolescents. The president laments. “It’s catastrophic. We are sacrificing a generation.”
– Omar Kedadouche