Morocco ended its surprising run at the World Cup with a 2-1 loss to Croatia on Saturday, dashing the hope of bringing the first World Cup ware to Africa.
But it wasn’t bad after all; the Atlas Lions have changed the status of the African continent in FIFA World Cups with their terrific performance that saw them book a place for the third-place match. Morocco stunned the world when it beat Belgium 2-0 in the Group F match, signaling that it wouldn’t be business as usual for the African teams in the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
As the World Cup progressed, Morocco put up another unprecedented performance, holding Spain to 0-0 full time score and eventually defeated the European side 3-0 on penalties to advance to the quarter final for the first time.
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The win supposedly boosted the team’s morale. In their next match against Portugal, Morocco once again silenced a large section of the world that was already tipping the European nation for the final. The North African country maintained a stunning 1-0 lead over Portugal at full time, setting up a semi final duel against France, its biggest challenge so far at the tournament.
Morocco made history in its loss 0-2 to France. It became the first African and Arab country to reach the semi final stage of the World Cup, after several attempts by other African national teams. Cameroon in 1990, Senegal in 2002 and in 2018, Ghana were so close but lost the penalty that could have sealed the win against Uruguay and secured the semifinal spot for them.
“My players gave everything,” Morocco coach Walid Regragui said after the match against France. “They’ve gone as far as they could. It’s difficult for them to take now. They wanted to rewrite the history books, but you can’t win a World Cup with miracles, you have to do it with hard work and that’s what we are going to do, keep working.”
Though they fell to France, Morocco, by making it to the semifinal, justified FIFA’s decision to include more African teams in the 2026 World Cup.
In 2017, FIFA reached a decision to increase the number of African national teams that will participate in the World Cup. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) had lobbied for at least 10 spots, a fair representation of the continent’s 54 nations in FIFA’s 211 member associations.
By FIFA’s decision, which means that the allocation for places at the World Cup has been expanded to 48 nations, Africa is now guaranteed nine places, up from the current five. FIFA Council also allows for a 10th nation to enter a six-team play-off tournament to decide the final two qualifiers, meaning that Africa could have up to 10 teams.
From one team (Egypt) in the 1934 tournament in Italy to two in 1982, and subsequently five in 1998, Africa is gradually closing the gap between her and other continents. For Morocco, which became the second African team to appear in the World Cup in 1970, Qatar 2022 has become an outing that will never be forgotten – it’s a tournament where Africa won.