Failure was not an option. Hours before the game, Morocco ignited national enthusiasm over a victory for the national team against a world champion like La Roja. When the last penalty scored by the Atlas Lions sealed the game, Moroccan fans, mostly fans of La Liga teams, exploded in celebration. There are 19 Spanish football clubs in the North African country: 13 from Barcelona, 3 from Real Madrid, 2 from Atlético and 1 from Seville. They danced in the streets, in front of the café doors, in the car caravans to celebrate the first round to the quarter-finals at a world championship in the history of the red-green team.
“The Atlas Lions meet Switzerland in the Quarterfinals,” predicted the newsstand Ahmed Ghilali, 61 and a Barça fan, while the sports press was stationed at the counter. “Spain and Portugal will be left out,” he predicted in a symbiosis of expert opinion and narrow-minded indifference as the prize-winning Iberian sides fell.
The capital’s streets had been deserted since early afternoon amid widespread closures of educational centers. The cafes concentrated those who could not go home yet or preferred to be in crowded company. “It was a fifty-fifty,” Khalid, a 32-year-old textile entrepreneur, lectured in front of the screens at the Sotto Sopra bar-restaurant, a regular meeting place for fans in the center of the capital. Sayed, an engineer of the same age, made a technical statement after the game ended: “Morocco let Spain have the ball but they didn’t allow them to play their style. The rest was luck… And to have a great goalkeeper like (the Sevilla player) Bono”.
It was after midday and Ahmed’s newsstand would soon be closing up while the troops and officers of the Royal Armed Forces General Staff marched briskly down Patrice Lumumba Avenue in Rabat’s Hassan district. They made their way home to catch the meeting at a large family reunion, as is customary in Morocco.
Spanish civil servant Elena, 51, and her husband, commercial director Hasan, 54, watched the game with their extended Moroccan family. She supported the Red colors while the rest cheered on the Atlas Lions. Apart from his youngest son Elías, 12, who shared his heart between the two rivals. In the morning he had gone to school in the jersey of Achraf Hakimi, a Madrid-born idol of the Moroccan team and Paris Saint-Germain player. “He says he’s going with both teams,” his mother revealed, “but the procession is going in. He ended up losing his voice because he was screaming so much with both teams.”
Carmen and Mohamed, two 59-year-old freelancers, also followed the meeting in Rabat with a large Moroccan family clan. “We have the two flags next to the television,” says the childless couple in unison. “The Moroccan community in Spain and the Spanish community in Morocco saw it as a derby, as if it were a final,” said Mohamed, “but if La Roja had played another country, I’m sure the Moroccans would have supported them in a gesture of good neighborliness,” he dared.
Spaniard Elena described with good humor the intertwined feelings lived during the meeting in a mixed Spanish-Moroccan family: “I myself died with Spain, but I really like the Moroccan players, and also their coach (Walid Regragui , a French-born former soccer player)”. He believes the person dubbed Moroccan Pep Guardiola is the soul of the team.
“He called the best and convinced them that they can achieve a lot in just three months at the head of the team,” Elena sums up the majority opinion in the North African country, “and he managed to build a bridge between the League players from home and abroad. Of the 26 he called to Qatar, 14 were born or lived in countries like France, Spain or the Netherlands.
A meeting with confidence
Having lived in the North African country for more than two decades, the Spaniard could see the great confidence with which she approached the round of 16 game against Spain in Morocco, but she also harbored a deep fear of clashing with an experienced champions team in the tensions of great international competitions. Moroccans knew beforehand that they had to learn to manage their emotions. “I hope that one wins with honor and the other loses with sportsmanship,” Elena expressed her best wishes before the game started. His omen seemed to be coming true.
The one considered by the Moroccan press to be the country’s best generation of soccer players made history last Thursday by signing the second round of 16 pass at a soccer World Cup in 36 years. After defeating Canada, the Atlas Lions fulfilled an old dream, this time as undefeated leaders in front of sides with pedigree from Croatia and Belgium. Morocco also played at home in Qatar, supported by their country’s 40,000 supporters, and as the only Arab country to advance to the second round.
“Pride and passion” is how Tahar Ben Jelloun, one of the most renowned contemporary Moroccan writers, defined the feeling his country is experiencing at this World Cup on the digital portal 360 Sports. “Beating Belgium (0-2) will go down in history,” predicted the Tangier-based novelist. “A team desperate to win sealed the success with intense emotions across the country,” he summarized, before noting that in the cafés “there were numerous women – some of them veiled, some with their hair blowing in the wind – with the same dream: to see Morocco win”. The victory over Spain is now also part of the sporting history of the narrowest North African country.
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