On the same day Faten Ben Omar El Azizi drowned trying to swim to Ceuta, her mother received a phone call from a Spanish official. Her daughter's visa had been approved.

Faten was 26 and played football for Maghreb Atlético Tetouan, in Morocco's regional women's league. She died on 30 July, among some 150 people who tried to cross the border into the Spanish enclave that day. According to the migrant rights organisation Caminando Fronteras, at least 141 people died attempting the crossing during July - drowned, or crushed at the land border. Most of them were under 35.

Twenty-five euros per win

Football did not pay a living. Faten took around 25 euros for a win, and for a defeat - nothing. Her coach recounts that she loved training: Tuesdays on the pitch, Thursdays on the beach near Tetouan.

To support her family she also worked at the oldest cemetery in Tetouan - cleaning graves and selling visitors sprigs of basil, which in Muslim tradition are tied to a blessing for the dead. Her mother Jamila says the thing that needs no further explanation: she dreamed of reaching Europe through football.

The figure that explains the border

Nearly 40 percent of Moroccans aged 15 to 24 were unemployed last year. The minimum wage in the private sector runs at around 300 euros a month. The country saw its biggest protests since the Arab Spring of 2011, with one demand that needs little interpretation: money for healthcare and education instead of expensive stadiums for the 2030 World Cup, which Morocco will co-host with Spain and Portugal.

A state that builds stadiums for a tournament the world will watch for three weeks, while its twenty-somethings walk into the sea because nothing on land is waiting for them - is not producing accidents. It is producing a predictable outcome.

What was left

Jamila never knew her daughter had applied for a visa at all. She suspects Faten tried through unofficial channels and did not expect it to be approved - which makes the decision to make the crossing even harder to explain.

She then learned that her other two children had set out on the same route. The eldest son reached Ceuta and called. For the 14-year-old daughter, believed to have entered Spanish territory, there is still no word. The sentence the mother ends on needs no comment: now I am alone, without my children.

Faten's visa was approved. The document existed. It only arrived a day after the sea did - and that is the whole difference between a procedure and a life.