It will not be hard to spot the underdog on opening night of the 35th Africa Cup of Nations.
The Comoros Islands represent the smallest land mass of any of the competing countries, the lowest population of any participant, and, once the curtain goes up, they will certainly hear loud and clear who is going to be enjoying the loudest support for the coming weeks in Morocco.
The 68,000-capacity Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium in Rabat will stage each of hosts Morocco’s group games, beginning against the Comorians on Sunday evening. All going to plan, the Atlas Lions will be in Rabat again for the final on January 18.
They carry the tag of favourites for good reasons beyond the fact they will be playing at home.
No team in Africa holds a higher rank in the current Fifa hierarchy – 11th in the world – than Morocco and the form of the senior national men’s side – 19 wins and a draw from their last 20 games – would look like real momentum on its own, even without the supporting records of their backup teams over the last 18 months or so.
That would include the squad that excluded players selected for Afcon but who nevertheless won the Fifa Arab Cup, beating Jordan 3-2 in a pulsating Doha final on Thursday. The Morocco who won August’s African Nations Championship, the competition that is open only to footballers attached to clubs in their country’s domestic league; or the largely under-23 squad who finished with a bronze medal at the 2024 Olympic Games.
Afcon 2023 final highlights
And anybody seeking further proof that this is a football culture on the rise, recall that in October, Morocco became the new world champions at under-20 level.
There is considerable investment behind these successes and the most visible show of that, as of the ambition of the kingdom to be and remain a major force in the world’s most popular sport, are stadiums like the Moulay Abdellah and the 75,000 Tangier Grand Stadium, where perhaps the most potent Afcon challengers, Senegal, will be based for their group stage.
Senegal, with their high-quality midfield, and the accumulated know-how of Sadio Mane and Kalidou Koulibaly in front and behind, were champions two Afcons ago and look well-equipped to make it to a third final in as many tournaments.
But there are certain trends and patterns that cannot easily be overlooked. When the Cup of Nations is staged in a Mediterranean country, there’s a tendency for a North African team to triumph: Algeria in Egypt in 2019; the hosts, respectively, in the tournaments staged in Egypt in 2006 and Tunisia in 2004.
Scroll back to 1990, and Algeria claimed the first of their two continental crowns in front of partisan home crowds. Of course, there’s a missing name in this list: Morocco’s. Of the four African heavyweights from the Mena region, they have conspicuously the most exasperating history with Afcons.
Morocco, while great pathfinders for Africa and the Arab world in terms of their World Cup landmarks – from gaining the continent’s first point at a finals in 1970, its first spot in a modern knockout phase in 1986, and, memorably, its first semi-final in Qatar three winters ago – finished fourth last time they hosted a Cup of Nations, in 1988.
They then pulled out of staging the competition altogether when they were due to welcome the tournament 10 years ago. That disruption, with the Morocco authorities citing a health threat posed by an outbreak of Ebola virus in west Africa, made enemies across the continent.
Over the decade since, fences have been mended and status restored so far that other nations now openly envy the clout Morocco carries in the upper echelons of football.
What few envy is the scant roll of honour in terms of Afcons. Morocco have a single title to their name, six fewer than Egypt, no more than Congo-Brazzaville or Zambia. And it’s been half a century since a Morocco team returned home from Ethiopia with an Afcon trophy to show off to the fan base.
That’s a long drought, as current manager Walid Regragui acknowledges: “We’ve been waiting a long time for this trophy, and I would not be telling the truth if I said there is no pressure.”
Some of it comes from his immediate bosses, whose building of state-of-the-art resources, from stadiums to academies has moved at pace, with the idea that investment will pay off at this Afcon, at the 2026 World Cup, where Morocco hope to at least emulate their last-four finish from Qatar 2022, and during their co-hosting of the 2030 World Cup.
“Right now, we are a match for any country in the world [in terms of facilities],” Regragui told L’Equipe. “It’s amazing what has been done in a relatively short period of time.”
His squad mixes experienced players, led by Paris Saint-Germain’s Achraf Hakimi – now in the last stages of his recuperation from a calf injury sustained on club duty six weeks ago – with the youthful zest of the likes of Eliesse Ben Seghir of Bayer Leverkusen and the Sunderland winger Chemsdine Talbi.
It’s a first major tournament for Real Madrid’s Brahim Diaz, perhaps the most high-profile of the dual-national players Regragui has assiduously courted and persuaded to commit to Morocco when they might have chosen a European country they were eligible for, in Brahim’s case Spain.
If the Comoros are unlikely to resist too long on match day one, stiffer challenges lie ahead. Like from Senegal. Or defending champions Ivory Coast. Or the Nigeria of Victor Osimhen.
There must be confidence that a rising Algeria, still with Riyad Mahrez in the captaincy, can only do better than the group-stage exits of the last Afcons: any Algerian collision with their Moroccan neighbours in the knockout phase would be highly charged, on and off the pitch.
Assuming Regragui’s team top their group and progress through the first knockout round, then the next opponents might easily be South Africa, who out-thought and eliminated the Atlas Lions at the 2023 Afcon, or Egypt.
For Egypt’s Pharaohs, ambition is always set high, not least in the month that Mohamed Salah’s relationship with Liverpool suffered some ruptures, from which his compatriots believe a benefit might flow to the national team.
Salah’s Afcon history is one of dramatic ups and downs, including two losing finals and, two winters ago, fierce criticism that an injury in the group stage led him to go back to his club early, amid perceptions Liverpool was his priority.
The mood is different now. Egypt is Salah’s principal focus. And at 33, he is running out of time to achieve the Afcon title that has so far eluded one of Africa’s very greatest stars.
