People were saying Morocco was a one hit wonder in Qatar. World Cup semifinal Olympic semifinal U20 Final They are here to stay. They will be a force to be reckoned with for a long time. The team is currently better than their 2022 team and the youth teams are churning out talent.
Honestly, I've always thought they've been a very good team overall, but for some reason or another they were often underachieving. Doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
they are also hosting the AFCON in a couple of months. Given how some of the their contemporaries struggled / are struggling in World cup qualifying, they must be considered the favorites for that. They've only won the AFON once, way back in 1976, but could be something else to add to their tally......
They have talent (and good young talent) that is for sure. But to be consistently making runs at the World Cup is going to take more than that. We shall see if they are here to stay at the highest level. But so far so good.
Not really saying they will be consistently making deep runs. You can't really say that about any team. Look at Germany (2022, 2018), Argentina(2018) England (2014) All top teams have the potential to get grouped or have a poor world cup. I'm saying I believe Morocco is and will be for a long time a part of the top 10 to 15 teams in the world that consistently has THE POTENTIAL to make deep runs. For me if we want to talk about the best non world cup winners, and their current and future potential. It's Portugal, Netherlands, then Morocco.
I wonder if Croatia will be able to continue churning out the quality. In their short history, and with a smaller population, they have done more than Portugal in its entirety at the World Cup. I also wonder about Morocco if their European training pipeline should dry up for whatever reason.
The Balkan nations always churn out quality players. But Modric was a generational talent, and once he's gone, or past it , Croatia won't be the same. Morocco or Portugal do not depend on any individual player like Croatia does with Modric. So IMO Croatia will always be a solid team, but they aren't going to be anywhere near as good as they were the past 2 WCs.
Perhaps, but they did not have him in 98 and made the semis. Three semifinal appearances with 2 different generations of players suggest they may be able to hang onto to the "potential to make deep runs" monicker.
Then again, before 2018, they hadn't made it past the group stage since '98. And they won't have to only replace Modric, also nearly their entire front (Perisic is 36, Budimir and Kramaric are 34). They should still be able to make it to future WC's, but it'll be tough to make a run similar to '98, '18 and '22.
It's should also be noted that Croatia got a bit lucky in 2018/22, winning two PK shootouts each year.....the odds of that happening are 16:1, i.e. about 6%.
That where most people (that don't know Morocco) goes wrong, Morocco does not deepened on European born players at 100%, just because most of them plays in Europe should not mean all were born there, when they reached the semis in WC2022 their roaster had 11 players that was composed in Morocco, and the team that have reached the semis in Paris2024 their top-scorer was composed in Morocco, the current U20 team that made the finals has a handful of them as well, Plus just few months ago Morocco won the Africa Cup of locally based players for the 4th time (it's an official CAF competition) You said and I quote: "Morocco's European training pipeline" which by the way as a Moroccan myself I find very funny, you should know that since AFCON 2004 all roasters we've had... had European training players with at least 80% of them, sure we may have reached the Final that edition but we have continued a similar Idea with every single generation after that, But we still failed to win the AFCON or even qualify for multiple world cups, even though the MENA media and African media always considered us the most likely to win something because we had the most priced roaster most of the time but couldn't achieve anything! this idea that some people have about Morocco's European players did not matter until Morocco started making some results! Therefore having European training players does not guarantee anything without hard work and strong mentality with some local type of playing ID, And Yes we are aware of the fact that we must not always depend only on our European based players because they can get fewer anytime (although thank goodness they haven't since the 90s ) or simply they might prefer to play for the European national team (Lamine Yamal as example ), that's why the FRMF are doing their best with composing as many locally based players as possible in local football academies then send them to Europe at an early age if possible, if we can have few of them on every world cup roaster that is a success since the competition is high, note that when I say locally based/composed does not necessary means a player plays in the local league, they may have been transferred to Europe or Gulf..., very few coaches would chose a player from a local club over someone who plays in Europe unless he's good enough, although if a player from a local team made it directly to the A team the chance he can get a Europe/Gulf deal gets bigger With that bein said, my take here is not about being there to last as some good people have said, I mean I hope so but Football is very tough and I'm enjoying it while it lasts, although humbly speaking we've made enough history to try to build on in case of a future set back, just like the case with about Top 50 national teams of the world
They also barely escaped the group of death with Lukaku missing a number of sitters. 98 was also a Golden generation for them with players like Suker, Prosinetski, Boban. They're always gonna have good players, I just don't think it will be on the 98 and Modric era level.
Yeah. Morocco (and other African teams) have been using Euro born players for a long time. Its nothing new, It only became a talking point when they actually achieved something, was never a talking point when they were failing.
Possibly, but youth tournament results don't mean much anymore (if they ever did). Especially the Olympics, which on top of being a youth event, doesn't even involve the best teams in the world. The last WC, the current WC qualifiers and their talent are all the indicators that matter.
meh, success at the Youth WC is like seeing a pretty girl smiling back at you it feels promising, but it doesn’t always mean what you think it means. Yea a deep run can hint at a bright future for the senior NT, but let’s be real: the top football nations don’t exactly send their “A” kids anymore. Germany? I read that they’ve practically boycotted sending their best prospects for years (I think b/c to their own youth system rules). France was supposedly missing half their wonderkids. And Spain rolled in without Yamal, the best teenager in the world since Mbappe, which is basically like watching a game with a beer; makes no sense. And as far as Argentina, we didn't exactly bring our elite teenagers either. Mastantuono, Echeverri, Buonanotte, and a handful of others were all politely unavailable because clubs aren’t too keen on losing their young stars to a youth tournament and those kids wanting to stay at club so they can fight for regular minutes. So yeah, if your country goes far in the Youth WC, party it up!! But maybe keep the champagne on ice. It’s a nice sign, not a f#cking prophecy.
Remember UEFA sends weakened squads to u20+Olympic tournaments, which FIFA set as developmental events: pro clubs refuse to release players, so UEFA youth squads are a potpourri of fringe talent. Great publicity for FIFA from non-UEFA fans though, who dream of senior WC success by extrapolating skewed youth WC wins. In the end, UEFA laughs all the way to the bank with multiple knockout wins in senior WCs. Look at 2017 u20 champs ENG... multiple *experts* came of out the woodwork swearing that ENG would win a senior WC in no time. Where are those 21 u20 champs today (27-28 years old)? - Never played for senior ENG: 13 (2 switched countries - 1 match for NIR, 31x for NGA). - Played for senior ENG: 8 (Cook:1x, Walker:2x, Henderson:3x, Solanke:3x, Tomori:5x, Maitland:5x, Calvert:11x, Konsa:14x). As others have said, u20 WC success should be taken with fair amounts of salt.
I think you guys are completely missing the point. The point is that the Moroccon federation is a serious organization which is building for the future. They are going to be the next team that is right under the world powers, and they are going to be there for a while. Its not about any single tournament in particular, its the entire body. You cannot just dismiss World cup 2022 semi final African Nations championship (domestic based tournament) champions 2024 Olympic soccer 3rd place 2024 U20 African nations cup runners up 2025 U20 World Cup final 2025 You dont have this level of success across the board and it not mean anything.
Again kind of missing the point. Morocco is already a world cup semifinalist in 2022 The team in 2026 is better on paper plus they have a pipeline of youth talent comming through. So I'm actually failing to understand what point you are trying to make.
In a few words, you have error in analysis: taking multiple concurrent events as proof of a federation plan or football program taking place. Success in youth tournaments means little when plenty squads are full of fringe players (see 2017 u20 champs above). For the sake of world football growth, let us hope MAR do well in 2026 WC. I won't use a youth tournament as a senior WC barometer, though. English fans already embarrassed themselves in the past two senior WCs by over-hyping their 2017 u20 success.
U20 I agree is unreliable because of the problem of clubs releasing players - this doesn't happen for the U19 EURO though because the qualifiers are held during FIFA windows and the finals in the summer, thereby avoiding player release problems - but what about U17? At the U17 level clubs are probably much more inclined to release players because the benefit gained by participating in the U17WC would usually outweigh keeping them at their clubs where they usually wouldn't be getting much playing time. Therefore measuring performance over several editions of the U17WC - now an annual event like the U17 EURO always has been - might be a fairly reliable indicator of success at senior level.
I think people just got distracted because you listed some competitions which are not an indicator to anything. The reasons you list on this latest post are the relevant ones. I will add that when Africa sends a strong representative to the WC, they often do well. If you look at the last 30ish or so years, I recall only 2 mini eras where there was a standout African team - Nigeria in mid-1990s and Ghana around 15 years ago. Nobody could dispute that these were the best CAF teams in those times. There was some hype around them leading into WCs and they both did well at the highest (WC) level. Its not like in CONCACAF where you could clearly be the best in the region and still suck at the global level. Apart from those 2 eras, you'd be hard-pressed to identify who the best team in CAF was. Just a bunch of mediocrity and inconsistency across the board. But now, Morocco is that clear #1 team coming out of CAF, following in the footsteps of those Nigeria and Ghana teams that stood out.
Yeah people seem to think I said Morocco will be successful BECAUSE of this U20 WC. That's not what I said at all.