At the cup final in Tunisia, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali gazes down upon the arena with a benevolent smile from an enormous poster. The stadium is named the Seventh of November - after the day in 1987 when Ben Ali acceded to power. Politics appears to blend easily with sports in the countries of northern Africa. Even so, the people treat the soccer stadiums as places where anything goes - as oases of unfettered emotion and a freedom otherwise rare in the autocratically governed Maghreb states.