Will Morocco write another chapter on African football?

Morocco were the first African team to qualify for the round of 16 at the World Cup, in Mexico 1986.

After that, they could only sit back and watch as Cameroon went a step farther four years later, reaching a historic quarter-final, before Senegal (France 1998) and Ghana (South Africa 2010) followed suit.

It has taken the Atlas Lions 36 years to achieve this remarkable feat of entering the last eight of a World Cup competition.

They did it with grit and guile at the Education City Stadium four days ago, holding fancied Spain to a barren draw in 120 minutes of play before dispatching the 2010 champions 3-0 in the ensuing penalty shoot-out.

The Atlas Lions will face 1966 semi-finalists Portugal in the third quarter-final match Saturday from 6pm (local and Kenyan time) at Al Thumama Stadium, situated 12km from Doha city centre. 

One man can be credited with this meteoric rise of the Atlas Lions, Walid Regragui, who was appointed coach in August, three months to the start of the World Cup and under shaky circumstances.

The France-born Regragui replaced Bosnian Vahid Halilhodzic who had controversially kept out of the squad two star players, Chelsea’s Hakim Ziyech and Noussair Mazraoui of Bayern Munich, over what he called disciplinary issues.

Regragui, who was the Morocco assistant coach in 2012-2013, promptly returned the duo to the Atlas Lions’ den, but there were still question marks over a Lions team that could not even get past the quarter-finals of this year’s Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon.

His riposte came in their very first match of the world tournament on November 23 against Croatia in a tough Group ‘F’ that also contained Belgium and Canada. 

He was received with loud clapping and cheering from the impressed Moroccan media here in Doha during the post-match interview after the Atlas Lions held the 2018 World Cup finalists to a barren draw.

When Morocco stunned Belgium, the second highest ranked team in the world by Fifa, 2-0 in their second group match on November 27 there was near pandemonium at the Al Thumama Stadium as the pressmen from Morocco widely cheered the Paris-born, 47-year-old Regragui as he stepped into the conference room for the post-match rituals.

His post-match press conference after defeating fancied Spain 3-0 on penalties in their intriguing round of 16 was delayed by minutes, but the normally impatient scribes from Morocco did not mind one bit, applauding loudly, not unlike a cheer squad, as he emerged for the interview.

“You have made the Moroccan people proud. You have brought honour to your king with this victory,” one of the journalists, almost in tears, said during the press conference.

Regragui, a former international, who played for Toulouse and AC Ajaccio, a club Kenya’s Dennis Oliech once featured for, had made this promise to Moroccans on his appointment day: “We want to do great things.”

On Friday he said: “No one expected to see us in the last 16 and the quarter-finals, but we are here. We are playing one of the best teams in the world that wants to win the World Cup.  They are favourites, we are the underdogs, just like we were against Denmark, and Spain. We will try to pull off a surprise. We will do everything to try to win this game.”

Lose or win, the Atlas Lions have already written their history here in Qatar to add to the African and Arab football story.