Morocco bow out with head held high, but will come again

The moment sank in slowly, but deeply. When the final whle blew, ending one of the most stirring World Cup stories, the Moroccan players gazed pensively into the turf, their faces covered in their shirts, as though they wanted to flee the clutches of reality.
Some of them slumped to the turf, soaked in their sweat and tears, some wandered aimlessly, before they staggered to the edge of the ground and offered their prayers. They scrambled back to their feet and slowly raised their hands to acknowledge the resounding support of the crowd. Their supporters, still weeping, plastered smiles on their faces and bade the heroes a rousing farewell.
Beside the dugout, shaven-headed manager Walid Regragui put on a stoic smile and consoled his men who had left behind a bunch of warm memories on the field and made hory becoming the most successful African team ever in the tournament, who had become the darling of the masses.

Later, his eyes about to burst into a flood of tears, he said: “I told the players I was proud of them, His Majesty is proud, the Moroccan people are proud, the whole world is proud. We worked hard, we were honest, and we showed the values we wanted to show.”
The Moroccan batch of 2022 would not be forgotten, their giant-scalping spree is unlike any the World Cup had ever witnessed. But unlike previous Cinderella stories of the World Cup, stories that ended with an edition and never surfaced again, Morocco’s is a story that would have a broader resonance and a more sustained continuity.

An unforgettable run. Thank you for the memories, Morocco 🇲🇦❤️
— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) December 14, 2022
In most cases, fairytale teams just vanish, unable to script another chapter in their story. Like the Cameroon of Italia ’90 or Senegal and South Korea of 2002. All those teams flickered and faded. None could match, let alone improve, and emerge as a genuine footballing powerhouse for several reasons, be it dearth of talent, lack of planning or adminrative chaos.
But Morocco’s case, at least in the present tense, looks irrepressibly different. Primarily because they have a young nucleus who could be around for another World Cup cycle. The average age of this squad is 26; several key players are still quite young. Achraf Hakimi is 24; Nayef Aguerd 26, Youssef En-Nesyri 25, and Azzedine Ounahi 20, though some of them like Hakim Ziyech and Sofyan Boufal would be in their early to mid-30s.
European experience
However, Morocco needn’t worry about talent depth. There are 45 players, the most from any African country, playing in the top five leagues of Europe. There are 10 times as many Moroccans in the lower leagues of the continent as well as in the first division football teams of the Balkan region and Russia. Their brand of football is more European than African, reliant more on compactness and tightness, technique and physicality, whereas most African sides, with the notable exception of Senegal, are skill-obsessed, individual- fixated.
The football culture among Moroccans, living in Morocco as well as abroad, is strong as well to ensure that even if there is a slight plunge in consency, the sport would not vanish. “Everyone plays football in Morocco, from kids to grandfathers. It’s the most popular sport in the country and an obsession. There are clubs, grounds and stadiums, and I can only see the sport grow from here,” says Amir Badr, a journal.

It was not like Morocco was a footballing backwater earlier; they have featured in six World Cups, bid to host it as many times, and won the African Nations Cup as well. There is hory, though they couldn’t match it with performance until this World Cup. Even if there indeed were few that kept away from the game, the performance of their country would have captured their imagination. “It would become massive, it already is. Everyone would want their child to play football, to be Hakimi, or Ziyech,” Badr says.
The support for the game is massive, as was evidenced in the number of Moroccan fans arriving from all over the world. No other country, even though South Korea were co-hosts in 2002, could boast of such an overwhelming fanbase. In recent times, few other events have stirred and unified the nation as much as the roar of the Atlas Lions to the semifinals.
In Le Monde, French-Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun dwelled on the significance of the achievement:
“In my life, I will have experienced two horic moments of utmost importance: the return to Morocco of King Mohammed V (1909-1961), on November 16, 1956 – a return that led to the independence of Morocco – and the qualification, on December 10, 2022, of the Atlas Lions for the semi-finals of the football World Cup. The two events have nothing in common, but they both had an exceptional effect on the entire Moroccan people.”
Focus on grassroots
The achievement was no happenstance or merely a sequence of fortunate incidents. It was a result of concerted planning and infrastructure building. In 2009, the Moroccan King, devastated at the state of football in his country as they did not even qualify for the African Nations Cup, launched the Mohammed VI Football Academy in Rabat, shelling out an estimated 15 million dollars on 18 hectares.

All eyes on 2026 👀
The #FIFAWorldCup dream is over for Morocco. For now…
— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) December 15, 2022
“It’s the backbone of our football culture and has put a lot of means to advance soccer in Morocco,” Regragui said before the quarterfinals. Among the 12 home-bred players, four are from the academy including mainstays Azzedine Ounahi, Youssef En-Nesyri and Nayef Aguerd (Reda Tagaouti being the fourth).
The brain behind the academy was Nasser Larguet, now the technical director of the Saudi Arabia football team. In 2009, Nasser, with his experience of managing French clubs like Rouen, Cannes, Caen and Strasbourg, was given absolute charge of setting up an academy, scouting and nurturing players. He travelled all around the country, watched tens of thousands of players and brought those he found worthy to the academy. He would keep an eye for Moroccan players playing abroad as well, and is widely credited for cajoling many of them to represent the country of their descent rather than birth. For instance, he told Hakimi: “In Spain, there are so many full-backs, you might not get a chance. But in Morocco, you are a hundred percent starter.”
After two years, he returned to managing in France, after he was hired as head of the academy of Marseille. But the system and route-map were in place, and he never cut the ties. In fact, he catalysed the appointment of Hervé Renard as their first high-profile coach before anointing Regragui as the future coach. “I was not surprised (at Morocco reaching the last four). We had the players, coaches and the development programmes in place. We are now a force,” he told morocco.detailzero.com.Subscriber Only StoriesPremiumPremiumPremiumPremium
It is unlikely, thus, that Morocco’s story would be a one-off. Perhaps, these were the first signs of the sprouting of the first football powerhouse from Africa. And the tears they shed in Al Bayt might turn into the smiles of tomorrow.