Moroccan Lions: Why Did Morocco win the World Cup? How Many Africans Do They Think? – A Conversation with Jules Goule
In an Abidjan cafe where people were watching the game and drinking beer to celebrate the win, customer Jules Goule said Ivorians were proud of Morocco’s win. He said that Africa had shown that it could compete with other continents in football.
The Atlas Lions, the team that’s ripped up the history books at the World Cup, are also known as The Atlas Lions. Their run has upended all expectations, advancing deep into uncharted territory, further than they or any other African team has ever managed before.
The game was over, and as the game concluded, the Casablanca fans screamed, “Ole, Ole, Ole!” Whenever Portugal possession of the ball, the group of Portuguese fans were drowned out with whistling and drown out by the group of Germans.
The man in the red and green of the flag raised his hands and shouted, “O God, O God”, as the final minutes drew to a close.
A fan stood motionless on the pitch, staring at the pitch with his hand over his mouth as if unable to take in the size of the win, as a Morocco player circled the pitch with a flag draped around his shoulders.
The crowd of fans that had gathered at a cafe to watch the game streamed into downtown, with many saying the last few minutes felt like hours.
The first African nation to reach the semifinals of the World Cup — Morocco’s Yussef En-Nesyri
On the edge of history and in the middle of the Middle East, on a field where the World Cup began and where African and Arab nations have never made it to the semifinals, Morocco will embody history as the first African and Arab nation to make it to the semifinals since the tournament began in France is the defending champion of the soccer game, as well as a former colonial power.
The game’s only goal came just before halftime in the 42nd minute when Morocco’s Yahya Attiat-Allah lofted a ball in front of the Portugal goal and Youssef En-Nesyri soared high and headed it down past the keeper. The first Moroccan to score at two World Cups is En-Nesyri.
“Being an Arab I’m very proud. Because we love football,” Saad said. The top European rosters are filled with African players. We are as skillful as individuals. We can do anything.”
The Dream Comes true: Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates the One Thousand and One Nights of Morocco’s Golden Goalkeeper YASSINE Bonou
For a second straight match, star Cristiano Ronaldo started the game on the bench for Portugal. The 37-year-old is one of the finest to ever play the sport but the aging star hasn’t been his usual dominant self at this tournament (he hasn’t scored a single goal). His replacement, who scored three goals, didn’t make much of a difference. The game was not going to last longer than the 51st minute. He walked off the field after the game and wiped away some of his tears.
Elite World Cup teams often speak of dancing — finding their rhythm and joy in a crucible of pressure. The players say that their run inQatar has surpassed the dreams of any other African or Arab nation.
Romain Saiss said, “We had a dream, of course.” It is free to dream. So we can dream. But, after, to do it is different. We put a lot of energy in each game — physically and mentally it’s hard, but at the end it’s so good.”
One ecstatic fan said the win over Portugal was a story from the stories he heard about nights of the One Thousand and One Nights. He said that he lived the dream today. “Thank you, Qatar, thank you, thank you.”
Morocco’s fans have been among the loudest in Qatar, willing their team to withstand onslaughts from some of the game’s best players, from Belgium’s Kevin De Bruyne and Croatia’s Luka Modrić to Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.
Morocco’s back line is anchored by Achraf Hakimi, a versatile defender who was born in Spain and plays professionally for the famed French club Paris Saint-Germain. Kylian Mbappé, a French football player who played for Paris Saint-Germain, said earlier this year that Hakimi is the best right-back on the planet.
And goalkeeper YASSINE Bonou. Bono, has been clutch, making 39 saves so far, according to FIFA. Crucially, he saved two of the three penalty shots taken by Spain, after the two sides finished play 0-0.
The Moroccan World Cup Team: The Rocky Balboa of the World Cup, with a Game-Changing Substrate in Hakim Ziyech
The team has shown it can win in a variety of ways, from defensive slugfests to creating opportunities through open play and winning a penalty shootout.
I think we’re the Rocky Balboa of the World Cup, because of our hard work and commitment,” Regragui said according to Agence France-Presse.
Like the boxer depicted in the movie, and like the world-beater athletes, who all refused to lose, Morocco has absorbed punishment. The team is showing the effort it takes.
Several key players have suffered injuries in Qatar, including the captain Saiss, 32, who left the match with Portugal on a stretcher, with an apparent hamstring problem. Others hurt include center back Nayef Aguerd and Noussair Mazraoui, both of whom sustained injuries that have been reported as thigh or knee injuries.
The national team lost Amine Harit, a talent in an attacking area, and their performance was shocking. Harit was involved in a serious knee injury just before the World Cup began, while he was playing for his pro team.
In Harit’s absence, others are carrying the load, from steadfast midfielder Sofyan Amrabat, 26, to Youssef En-Nesyri, 25, the striker who soared through the Qatari sky to head in the winner against Portugal.
According to the statistics displayed by FIFA, attacking mid-fielder, Hakim Ziyech, 29, has stepped up on defense and disrupted opponents while also serving up 20 crosses and putting eight shots on goal.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/13/1142278928/morocco-world-cup-history-team-profile
The Birth and Death of Morocco: From Football to the Football World Cup – The Case of Eurasebio da Silva Ferreira, Spain’s Sergio Aguilar
In 1986 the team coached by Jose Faria was going through intensive training to make them ready to play in the heat of Mexico. They were in Monterrey for 40 days. When West Germany was able to win, the squad finally left.
In the last World Cup, 17 of Morocco’s 23 players were born abroad, mostly in Europe, the MPI noted. According to the Sport and Nation research project at the university, 16 of Algeria’s World Cup athletes were born in France.
For a player to represent a country they were not born to, it is not unusual. The Migration Policy Institute states that 12% of athletes at the third World Cup wore national colors that were different from their birth country.
The numbers show a reversal. European countries that for decades larded their talent-rich rosters with elite players who had roots in former colonies are now seeing top players opt to represent their family’s ancestral home — even if the athlete was born in Europe.
Morocco’s stunning victory over Portugal takes on even more significance in that light. After all, Portugal accomplished its best-ever finish at the World Cup — third place at the 1966 tourney — with the help of several players who were born in colonial Mozambique, including the legendary Eusébio da Silva Ferreira.
Aiding the shift toward ancestral countries is a 2004 FIFA rules change making it easier for eligible players to switch their national team affiliation even if they’ve already played for one country’s national youth squad. That was the case for Morocco’s Ziyech, who played for the Netherlands’ youth team before deciding to help Morocco in its quest to bring a World Cup dream into reality.
The Palestinian cause has been in the news and on the streets during this tournament. When the Moroccan team posed with the unmistakable tricolor flag during their celebrations, the cause – which supports Palestinian self-determination – benefited from the oxygen of a global media platform.
I am the last one who would make grandiose statements based on a sporting event. My disinterest in football when I was in Casablanca in the 80s was so great that I decided not to refer to it as soccer. At school, I was the gangly, uncoordinated kid who would systematically be picked last when teams were selected during gym class. When I was in the back of the head, the closest I’d come to the ball was when it hit me. I preferred the ones about dinosaurs that my friends collected during the World Cup, even though they were about football players.
CNN’s View of the Middle East: A Multi-Fantasy Moment of Joy in the Football Legend of a World Cup Winner
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The team whose foreign-born players come from six different countries is the result of the players family, according to a CNN interview with a North African football expert. Coach Regragui told them that they have different cultural baggage, but the thing that united them was their parents. Mezahi said that they will have no success if their parents are not happy.
The players, fans, and journalists covering the games in the World Cup know that sport can have a big effect on the world, but they don’t need to be amplified beyond the touchline to be special.
It’s “a source of joy for a region that’s been marred by violence and upheaval,” Samia Errazzouki, a PhD candidate in Northwest African history at UC Davis, told CNN. “I think this moment of joy resonates with everyone who is downtrodden.”
Many football fans from across the region were seen carrying the Palestinian and Morocco flags during a Monday night stroll through the Souq Waqif. Some people spoke to CNN, including boys from Syria and Egypt, a man from Algeria and a girl from Sudan. “All Arab countries, from the Gulf to the sea, are one body,” said Anwar Ramadan, who walked through the Souq with a “Free Palestine” scarf around his shoulders. He told CNN that he wears the flag so that the rest of the world can see that “Palestine is present in every corner.”
The leader of the Arab world hoped that leaders would be able to unite the region like the one who did it in the World Cup.
One of four Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel in 2020 was Morocco, which left from a long-time regional policy that required the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Sweeping displays of solidarity with Palestinians highlights the disconnect between those governments’ official positions and continued hostility towards Israel.
The journalists are covering the games because they know a future generations will want a reenactment of these historical events.
By that time, the story will be a fable. The players will become almost mythical figures, and the supporting cast will be a part of it. The mothers’ pride of The Atlas Lions will never be forgotten.
Zeedine Zidane: When Zee became a champion in Morocco, his memory of the First World Cup triumph, went viral
Editor’s Note: Khaled A. Beydoun (@khaledbeydoun) is a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit covering the World Cup in Qatar. He is writing a book about the New Crusades and the Global War on Muslims. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.
History is not the past. It is the present now. We carry our history with us. James Baldwin wrote in his book “We are our history”, that Blackness was branded as inhuman.
France is expected to win, but more importantly, a globe of people who see themselves in their players in between the boundaries of Africa and beyond the outstretched arms of the formerly colonized world will see a team announcing that we are not your inferiors.
Many Marocains Francais are stuck inside a play where being Spanish negates the chance of becoming a formally French person, so much so that it’s been used in novels about people being murdered on Algerian beaches. It is a country with an Arab population, where Benzema lamented in 2011 that he is French when he scores.
The 1998 French team which won the first World Cup in France has been shrouded in French ruffled folklore, but that is nothing compared to the story of the undisputed star of that team, Zinedine Zidane. After he defeated overwhelming favorite Brazil, Zidane’s chiseled face shone across the Arc de Triumph: the son of Algerian immigrants projected upon one of France’s most recognizable totems.
While the 1998 team’s symbolism of unity faded from memory, the 2018 team – many of whom will be on the field again defending France’s title in Qatar – served as an admission that France needed the children of colonialism to lift World Cup gold.
France, for all of its colonial plunder and footballing splendor, has long been a team that divides, one so tinged with political fracture that former President Nicolas Sarkozy held a meeting with the French Football Federation in 2008 following a match against Tunisia in Paris to demand no more matches be played on French soil against the national teams of former colonies from north Africa.
How did Morocco win the World Cup?” a Moroccan journalist says of the world’s largest community: “It feels like I am here now”
” I have never felt this sense of belonging to my country as much as I feel today”, Abdelali tells NPR.
The largest Moroccan community in North America is located in Montreal, home to the photographer Essyrios. For the past few weeks, he’s been busy capturing scenes of glee and raucous celebration as Morocco, the world’s No. 22 team, defied the odds to become one of the World Cup’s final four.
In France, more than one million of Casablanca’s 5 million expatriates live. For Moroccans who opt to immigrate farther west, Montreal, where French is the official language, is an appealing destination. More than a third of Moroccans speak French, according to the International Organisation of La Francophonie.
Essaouis believes that the team’s amazing progress has made him more positive about his home country.
“What’s happening right now is historical. The whole world is supporting us, and just because of that support, to me, we already won the World Cup,” he says.