At last, Morocco have arrived at the tournament they are hosting. For four games they had played scratchy, crabbed football. Finally, in a spiky, ill-tempered quarter-final, there was something more like the Morocco that reached the semi-final of the World Cup just over three years ago. If the game wasn’t fluent, that was largely Cameroon’s doing as they spoiled and sought treatment. But the hosts, for the most part, retained their cool, protecting a lead earned with verve in the first half with maturity in the second.
In previous games, Morocco had looked tense, limbs leadened by the expectation of a country that last won the Cup of Nations 50 years ago and has spent a vast amount on football-related infrastructure as it prepares to co-host the 2030 World Cup. The coach, Walid Regragui, was even booed in the 1-0 last-16 victory over Tanzania, his football deemed overly cautious despite a record of only four defeats in his 46 games in charge before this quarter-final. Images broadcast from the respective dressing rooms on the screens inside the stadium before kick-off showed Morocco pensive and focused while Cameroon sang and danced.
But once the game had begun, there was none of the anxiety that had previously characterised their play. Fuelled by an extremely noisy crowd in the magnificent Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, a key part of that investment in infrastructure, they pressed ferociously from the off, won a series of corners and free-kicks around the box, and reduced Cameroon to trying to break the flow of the game. Sadly for them, and for Stoke, at least one of their injuries was genuine, the right wing-back Junior Tchamadeu damaging a knee as he challenged Noussair Mazraoui. His absence, and the change to the marking structure, was perhaps a contributory factor as Ayoub El Kaabi got to Morocco’s sixth corner of the game and headed down towards the back post where Brahim Díaz nudged in his fourth goal of the tournament. Another set-play brought the second with 16 minutes remaining, Ismael Saibari slamming in an angled shot after a free-kick had dropped to him at the back post.
