Morocco fans were unable to disguise their disbelief or contain their delight during the World Cup four years ago as their unheralded national team, who had only reached the knockout rounds once before, overcame Belgium, Spain and Portugal and got through to the semi-finals.
But as the Atlas Lions prepared to grace the tournament finals once again, nobody in Casablanca was saying, “We’ll always have Qatar 2022.”
The huge impact which Achraf Hakimi and his countrymen made over in the Middle East as well as their subsequent, albeit highly controversial, victory in the African Cup of Nations last season have raised expectation levels in their homeland considerably.
How will the eighth-placed side in the current FIFA World Rankings cope with being fancied to do well in Canada, Mexico and the United States this summer by both their own supporters and neutral observers?
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“The status of the underdog has gone,” said Amine El Amri, a sports reporter with the main Moroccan television channel 2M. “That stayed in Qatar. Everybody here is anticipating the team having another good World Cup and the players now have to live up to that.
“You could sense a shift in the vibe after the AFCON. There will be no fairytale this time around. I think dealing with supporters’ expectations will be the biggest challenge for Morocco at this World Cup. Mentally, it's going to be tough. But the quality is definitely there.”
It certainly is. The team that Scotland will face in their second Group C game at the Gillette Stadium in Foxborough on Friday is packed full of gifted individuals who play top flight club football in Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.
Hakimi, who helped Paris Saint-Germain to lift the Champions League for the second consecutive season last weekend, is the captain and figurehead. But the right-back is far from the only exceptional talent who Andy Robertson and his team mates will need to nullify.
“We have Yassine Bounou in goals, Noussair Mazraoui in defence, Ismael Saibari and Bilal El Khannouss and Neil El Aynaoui in midfield and Brahim Diaz up front” said El Amri.
“Hakimi, Mazraoui and Diaz are well known because of the clubs they play at, PSG, Manchester United and Real Madrid. But Saibari won MVP in the Eredivisie this year and there is talk just now about him moving from PSV Eindhoven to Bayern Munich in a £50m transfer.
“There are some good youngsters as well. Like Ayyoub Bouaddi, the 18-year-old midfielder who Arsenal have just made a £52m bid for, of Lille. He has only won three caps, but his potential is huge.”
This embarrassment of riches begs a question. How have a country which went 20 years without qualifying for the World Cup finals after France ’98 suddenly produced a golden generation?
Chris Van Puyvelde, the Belgian coach who spent four years as technical director of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation before leaving for the same role with the Chinese Football Association last year, is able to explain why Morocco were the surprise package at Qatar 2022 and how they have managed to build on their unexpected success since.
“When I started in Morocco, we reorganised the youth set-up,” he said. “But the first team was always the responsibility of the president and vice-president. They made a fantastic move before the last World Cup by bringing in Walid Regragui as manager. He knew how the Moroccan people thought and how they acted. That was very important.
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“He installed a tactical system which allowed his side to defend like the best European teams. But he also said, ‘We will attack like Moroccans’. That allowed players with technical ability to take on and eliminate opponents one on one with a speedy passing game, mostly in transition.
“But do you know what made the real difference in Qatar? I was dealing with the families over there and I gave the coach some ideas. In Morocco, family is very important. Mothers especially are very important. So I said, ‘Let’s have some family days together’. I think embracing their culture helped. After the games at the World Cup the players were dancing with their mothers. The spirit in the camp was tremendous.”
Van Puyvelde continued, “At youth level, we brought all of the coaches together and we brought in new principles in ball possession, in ball loss, in transition, which allowed young players to be more offensive.
“Why? Because Moroccan footballers are happiest when they have the ball. When they are kids they love to play 20 against 20 on the street. We tried to instal verticality in transition in every youth team. We went forward with clear rules, with clear principles and with a clear way of playing.
“Morocco won the Under-20 World Cup last year. They also won the Under-23 African Cup of Nations when Issame Charai, who had a spell as a coach at Rangers in Scotland and is now the manager a Westerlo in Belgium, was in charge in 2023. So it has definitely worked. Good young players have come through.
“But we also improved our scouting system across Europe. Before, everything was done by phone. We put in a system which gave us clear reports about all of the players who were playing across the continent.
“Morocco now have one of the best infrastructures in world football for youth teams. So when young Morocco-qualified players came over they saw that and realised there was a clear plan they would benefit from being a part of. We explained what we were doing and gave them all individual pathways.
“Their parents were also invited. That gave them even more desire to play for the country where, say, their grandparents came from. As I mentioned, family is very important in Morocco.”
El Emri said, “There has been a two-pronged strategy. The first thing they have done has been to collect the kids in Morocco who play street football and put them in academies where they can learn. The main one is the Mohammed VI Academy in Rabat.
“The second thing, and for me which has been very clever, is to scout the diaspora kids around Europe. Moroccans have always been a migrating people. That goes back centuries. We've always had strong ties in France and Spain, but also in Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands.
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“There were a lot of Moroccan-qualified youngsters who had been very well trained from a very young age at big European clubs like Ajax and Paris Saint-Germain. The strategy became to convince those kids that we had a strong project as a football nation. They were able to show these players, and their families, the modern facilities we had too.
“Qatar 2022 has had a big impact. There are now younger and younger players who want to play for Morocco. Before, they would maybe wait until they were not chosen by the Netherlands, by France or by Spain. It was the default choice. That is not the case any more. Bouaddi is the perfect example of that.”
Having a new manager is charge – Mohamed Ouahbi, who led the Morocco Under-20 side to their first ever victory in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup Chile last year, took over from Regragui in March - should be no impediment to Morocco doing well at World Cup ‘26.
Regragui famously replaced Vahid Halilhodzic just a few months before Qatar 2022 and quickly transformed an underperforming side which had been bedevilled by fallouts and infighting into a formidable force.
An impressive display in a 1-1 draw with Brazil in New Jersey on Saturday evening strongly suggested that Ouahbi is a shrewd appointment.
“He is not an experienced top-level coach,” said El Amri. “He is a former teacher and has worked more in age-group football than senior football. But the pedigree is there. He worked with Anderlecht in Belgium before he moved here and is of Moroccan descent.
“He has shown that he is far more of a perfectionist than Regragui was when it comes to tactics in the games he has had so far and there is a good, positive feeling about him. He has made a few changes. For a start, there are more sprints, there is more effort. “But we are now going with two pivots in midfield, with two defensive midfielders, in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Under Regragui, we played with just one. That's the main change. But in the games against Paraguay and Ecuador in March we also explored the idea of using a false No 9 rather than a striker. We played with a very offensive midfielder essentially. It has been quite effective.”
Morocco went on a 19 match winning run in 2024 and 2025 – a hot streak of form which eclipsed the previous international world record of 15 that was set by Spain in 2005 and 2006 – and they are being widely tipped to enjoy another good World Cup by knowledgeable observers.
Van Puyvelde is hopeful the Atlas Lions can roar again. But he is intrigued to see how a proud and passionate people handle being in the spotlight in the coming weeks – especially if they suffer a bad result and are savaged for it.
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“They are a good team with excellent, technically-strong players,” he said. “A lot of them are playing in Europe and have a European mentality in matches. They have a smart manager and superb coaching staff.
“But this tournament, due to the distance they will need to cover, due to the heat, due to the time difference, will be totally different to Qatar 2022. Four years ago we were in a small space and grew together. So the way the sports science staff prepare the team will also be very important.
“I am also interested to see how they cope with the emotional side of things. They have pressure on them, the whole country is watching. I am not sure how they will deal with that. You can fall down very quickly in a tournament because it goes very fast. It is a high-level competition and small details will make the difference.
“Human beings are human beings. When you live together for a long period, it is important to have everyone, those who play and those who don’t play, happy. If they are not happy then suddenly you have a very explosive group.”
