A ridiculously good footballer, Morocco’s midfield maestro Ayyoub Bouaddi has an irritating gift for almost everything he turns his mind to.
The 18-year-old Lille playmaker grew up in northern France and talks a good game. He won an oratory competition after delivering a speech at the Elysee Palace.
In his spare time, he escapes the pressures of professional football by studying for a degree in mathematics. As you do.
When a lenient Uzbekistani referee finally blew his whistle to end the game in the Boston Stadium in the early hours of Saturday morning, then, it was tempting to corner Morocco’s next superstar in the media mixed zone and start quizzing him on the permutations.
What did a 1-0 defeat mean for Scotland’s chances of qualifying for the last 32 of the World Cup? The simplest scenario remains a point against five-time winners Brazil in Miami on Wednesday.
A good deal easier to say than it actually is to do, the eight best third-place finishers from the 12 groups will secure a place in the knockout stages, and it requires the brain power of a Bouaddi to work out who will make the cut.
With three points in the bag from the win over Haiti, Steve Clarke’s side could have secured a slice of history with a single point against Morocco. After a hideous start, that looked as likely as a second term for Sir Keir Starmer.
The earliest goal ever conceded by a Scotland side in the World Cup finals came after 70 seconds when Grant Hanley made a mess of an offside judgement, and the lethal Bayern Munich striker Ismael Saibari thumped the ball into the postage-stamp corner.
In that opening 30 minutes, the Scots managed just 12 passes into the final third, their lowest-ever tally over a half-hour period. They struggled to pass and keep the ball, and the game was best watched through the cracks of the fingers. The portcullis came under sustained attack.
Restricting Morocco to one goal felt like a small mercy. Scotland ended the game with three points and a goal difference of zero, which offers a degree of wiggle room against Brazil. A 3-0 defeat would still leave a 56.6 per cent probability of reaching the last 32. Ship four goals to Neymar and co, and the probability drops to around 43.3 per cent. The odds are decent.
Fans of one or two clubs will always find fault in anything Clarke does. Others argue – with merit – that the Scottish FA should have held off on his new four-year contract until the World Cup was done and dusted.
To argue that he picked the wrong team or employed the wrong game plan against Morocco is to betray a level of ignorance which invalidates the opinion.
In a footballing utopia, the manager of Scotland would always pick a team built for all-out attack and go for broke against the best teams on the planet. In the real world, a world-class Morocco unit – destined for the latter stages of another World Cup – exposed the technical and physical limitations of the players at Clarke’s disposal.
The strength of this team lies in its unity and mentality. A refusal to crumble and fold dug out a one-goal defeat, which leaves them with a very acceptable chance of progressing to the last 32. Secure a place in the promised land and no one will care that the manager failed to throw on Lawrence Shankland for the last 10 minutes against Morocco.
“We don’t like losing against anybody,” said Clarke. “But we’ll rest, recover and get ready to go again. The games don’t get much easier, though, eh?”
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Before the game, the aim was to keep it tight against a quality team, avoid losing a goal in the opening 20 minutes, build a way into the game. The concession after 70 seconds exploded a bomb under all of that. There and then, you sensed Scotland were in for a long night. “You’re not kidding,” said Clarke. “I felt we picked ourselves up after that.
“It maybe took us ten minutes to get into the game because when you get a setback like that it can be really difficult to respond. Weaker teams would have crumbled against that type of quality opposition. But we dug in and got ourselves back in the game.
“We started to move the ball about a little bit better. And I thought the second period of the first half, after the first hydration break, we were good in the game.
"We had momentum going into half-time and carried that into the second half.”
The stats show that Scotland don’t offer enough firepower at tournaments. They’ve mustered seven shots on target in the last five games against Morocco, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and Haiti.
Regardless of whether that’s down to Clarke’s dogged tactical rope-a-dope approach or the superior athleticism, defending and technical ability of top-ten nations like Germany and Morocco, it’s difficult for any team to reach the knockout stage of a tournament when they fail to test the opposition goalkeeper. Morocco’s Yassine Bounou had almost nothing to do.
He should have had one, probably two, penalties to save. Thanks to an inept and inconsistent Uzbekistani referee and an American VAR official cowering in fear in a technical booth, he faced none at all.
John McGinn and Scott McTominay were felled by two similar challenges from the same player, Neil El Aynaoui. On both occasions, the midfielder’s leg came across their body and made no contact with the ball.
Video Assistant Referee for the game between France and Senegal, Armando Villareal recommended a spot-kick for a challenge on Kylian Mbappe. Referring the referee to the pitchside monitor, Alizera Faghani stuck by his original decision, and it’s natural to wonder if Villareal was wary of further embarrassment when he allowed two poor decisions by Ilgiz Tantashev to go unchallenged.
Scotland benefited from the non-award of a penalty against Haiti for a Hanley handball, and Clarke declined to make a big deal of three big decisions against his side. The other came when Fulham defender Issa Diop denied Che Adams a clear goal-scoring opportunity and escaped with a yellow card.
“Everyone in the flash area, where I did interviews, were talking about the Scott McTominay one,” said Clarke. “But that’s the only one I didn’t watch back.
“I thought the John McGinn one was a 50/50. Some will give it, and I think if the referee gives it, he doesn’t overturn it. I was a little bit 50/50 on the Che Adams last-man incident too. He had a chance to go through one-on-one with the goalkeeper and gets brought down.
“Again, the referee chooses yellow and VAR backs the referee. Listen, there is nothing we can do about it. We had a right go, and I’m proud of the players, but we’re all devastated and disappointed that we didn’t get the result that we wanted so that we can carry on in this tournament as long as we can.
“We now have to let the players suffer a little bit over the next 48 hours because that’s what they’ll do.”
Whatever happens now, this is not the best Scotland team of all time. While Lewis Ferguson and Jack Hendry had fine games, big players like McTominay have yet to impose themselves on the tournament and there was always the fear that it would come to this.
That a win over Haiti would be followed by a tough old slog against the team ranked sixth in the FIFA world rankings. Followed rapidly by another demanding night against the five-time world champions Brazil.
On Friday morning, news emerged of Moroccan captain Achraf Hakimi facing a rape charge in France after losing an appeal. Supported by the talented Bouaddi, Real Madrid playmaker Brahim Diaz and the lethal goal scorer Saibari, even serious criminal charges failed to put the world’s best full-back off his game.
Even then, Clarke’s side could – and should – have had a chance from 12 yards to claim the precious, coveted point which would have removed the tension and mathematical permutations around a game against Brazil.
“We want to win the game, and if we can’t win the game, then we don’t want to lose it,” added Clarke. “That’s the focus we will have in the next five days before we get ourselves down to Miami with the heat and the humidity.
“We will take on another top side from the world’s top ten.”
