Real Madrid v Pachuca: Morocco's Brahim Diaz seeks to crown stellar 2024 in Doha

Atlas Lions No 10 has emerged as a key player for both Spanish club and his national team

Brahim Diaz has become an important part of Real Madrid's attack this season. Getty Images

How much swagger would Real Madrid be bringing to Doha for Wednesday's final of the Intercontinental Cup without Brahim Diaz? Certainly, they’d be carrying less of the self-assurance that, as repeat European champions, they commonly bring into this competition, formerly the Club World Cup.

Without Brahim, their Morocco international, there’s a strong likelihood that the holders of the Uefa Champions League, the eight-time winners of Fifa’s main club prize, would be facing Mexico’s Pachuca at Stadium 974 in a state of panic. Without Brahim, they’d plausibly be sitting 27th in the new-look Champions League table, well short of where any club needs to be to go into the knockout stages.

It has been a testing season so far for Madrid, thrashed at home by Barcelona in October, still puzzling out the best role for stellar summer signing Kylian Mbappe, and defeated in Europe by Lille, AC Milan and Liverpool. That meant they went to Italian league leaders Atalanta last week desperately in need of points to resurrect their defence of the European Cup. They conceded twice. But, thanks to Brahim, they had the cushion of a lead when Atalanta struck.

Madrid’s first goal, finished by Mbappe, had been engineered by Brahim, via his quick exchange of passes with Lucas Vazquez, and the Moroccan’s threaded pass to Mbappe. Brahim, partly helped by a kind bounce of the ball off a defender, then helped set up Vinicius Junior for 2-1. Madrid eventually won 3-2. They still have work to do in the last two matchdays of the mammoth new league phase of the Uefa Champions League, but can breathe easier now they occupy a place in the table that would at least gain them a play-off for the last 16.

“Brahim is very important for us,” says Carlo Ancelotti, Madrid’s head coach. He admires his industry, his initiative and his versatility: “He can play wide, help in midfield and he’s contributed to our goalscoring.” None of which is a revelation to the Italian manager. “He was important last season”, added Ancelotti of the double-winning campaign. “But maybe it’s more obvious now."

Real Madrid's Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti gives instructions to Brahim Diaz during the derby clash with Atletico in February. AFP

Competition for starting places in Madrid’s front six is certainly, on paper, more fierce than six months ago. Mbappe, after a long, on-off transfer saga, arrived from PSG, a deluxe addition to the roster. Arda Guler, recruited in 2023 as an 18 year old, is meanwhile stepping impressively across the frontier between apprentice and big-game player. Vinicius finished runner-up for the 2024 Ballon d’Or and on Tuesday was crowned Best Men's Player at the Fifa Awards in Doha.

Then there’s Rodrygo, a big-game match-winner of excellent credentials; and Endrick, the super-prodigy from Brazil added to the stellar cast in July. Luka Modric is still, at 39, providing creative prompts. After a mixed start to the season, Jude Bellingham is again scoring goals from advanced midfield at a rate of one per game.

Injuries have hampered most of those at various points of the autumn but a very clear frown spread across Ancelotti’s face when, in mid-September, Brahim pulled up with a hamstring problem after 25 minutes of the 2-0 win at Real Sociedad in La Liga. The pessimistic forecast Ancelotti heard from his medical staff was that Brahim might be out of action for three months.

Instead, the player “came back in an extraordinary way,” beamed Ancelotti. Brahim was back, setting up a Vinicius goal in early November and promptly embarking on a surreal pair of internationals with Morocco. They were low-stress Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers – Morocco are safely qualified as hosts of the 2025 tournament – but still, to follow up a brace in Gabon with a hat-trick at home to Lesotho in the space of four days is quite the recovery from a serious muscle injury.

Brahim’s Morocco career has so far been short but utterly spectacular: Six competitive games, seven goals and two assists, an explosion preceded by well over two years of waiting, amid genuine dilemma. The diminutive attacking midfielder had, until March, been weighing up whether to continue on a promising trajectory with the national team of Spain, where he was born, or ally with Morocco, where his father’s family come from and where he spent significant periods of his childhood.

The evidence of the nine months since he committed to North Africa is that he chose well, even if Spain won this year’s European Championship. Morocco, with Brahim in their No 10 jersey, are favourites to triumph at the next Afcon. The huge warmth shown to Brahim since he made his debut for the Atlas Lions has, he says, touched and motivated him.

So has the hot competition for attacking spots in the team. Brahim knows he has no permanent red carpet rolled out for him in Rabat and Casablanca. Morocco, who two years ago were reaching a historic World Cup semi-final in Qatar, can appear as lavishly stocked for players with some of Brahim’s characteristics as a fully fit Madrid squad are.

Start with Hakim Ziyech, a Fifa Club World Cup winner in 2021, and run down the age scale, through Amine Adli, Bundesliga champion with Bayer Leverkusen, to Al Ain’s Asian Champions League hero Soufiane Rahimi, to the starlets who in August won an Olympic bronze medal alongside Rahimi, like Real Betis’s Abde Ezzalzouli, Leicester City’s Bilal El Khannouss and Monaco’s teenaged Eliesse Ben Seghir. Add Oussama Idrissi, outstanding in guiding Pachuca to Wednesday’s showdown and entitled to wonder why his last cap for Morocco dates all the way back to 18 months ago.

Brahim, likely to see significant action against Pachuca with Mbappe a fitness doubt, can trump all of those compatriots with the weight and calibre of his accumulated trophies. The 25 year old was once a prodigy, signed by Manchester City at the age of 16, owner of an English Premier League winner’s medal at 18; a Liga medal, after joining Madrid, at 20; and during a period on loan at AC Milan, a champion of Italy at 22. On Wednesday, Brahim pursues his first global club prize and what could be the second of seven possible trophies in this, a Real Madrid season that will run, breathless, all the way to the new-look Club World Cup in June and July. On this journey, says Ancelotti, “Brahim is going to be vital for us.”