Moroccan football stands today just shy of the summit it has yearned so long for. Second place in Africa, runners-up in a Cup of Nations, is no great failure in the wider context of where the Atlas Lions have been for half a century.
But the overwhelming sensation from their tempestuous, controversial, bitter 1-0 defeat to Senegal in the Afcon final is of deep disappointment.
“The chance of a lifetime,” Walid Regragui, the coach who has driven Morocco’s men’s team to some unprecedented heights, called the extra-time loss in the final.
It is coming close to a lifetime now since Morocco won their last and only Africa Cup of Nations title. That was in 1976. While it is scarcely possible to imagine that a country so capable, so ambitious for its football and so galvanised will wait another 50 years before ending the Afcon drought, the silver medals handed to their players late on Sunday came embossed with deep regret.
Resentment too, because for all the flattery rained on Morocco over the past month, for its largely impressive organisation of the 35th Afcon – an awkward beast of a tournament squeezed into the middle of most domestic seasons, and, as it happened, coinciding with unusually heavy rain in many of the cities – there is a sour aftertaste to the event.
It lingers from the furore that followed the 98th minute awarding of a penalty to Morocco in the final, with the score at 0-0. Brahim Diaz, the tournament’s leading scorer, had fallen to the ground in a jostle with El Hadj Malick Diouf around a Morocco corner.
That the penalty was given in the immediate aftermath of a Senegal ‘goal’ being ruled out for an infringement just before Ismaila Sarr headed in enraged the Senegal players, their coaching staff and some visiting supporters who made up a small minority of the near 70,000 crowd in the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium in Rabat.
“What we felt was injustice,” said Pape Gueye, the Senegal midfielder. “There had been a foul for us and the referee chose not to look at the VAR. We were frustrated.”
The response to that frustration would be extreme: petulant, undignified and, in a striking contrast to how Senegal play their football, hot-headed. The manager, Pape Thiaw, and several players took the decision to walk off, to abandon their participation in the match, a protest at perceived “injustice”.
And the severe consequences of the proposed abandonment could have been anticipated: They risked a ban for Senegal from future tournaments.
Wiser counsel eventually prevailed, including that of Senegal’s most celebrated player, Sadio Mane, one of the elder statesmen of the African champions. “Sadio told us to come back on the pitch to remobilise us,” reported Gueye.
“While we all saw what happened at the end [Sarr’s effort ruled out, Morocco awarded a penalty with almost no time remaining of stoppages after the 90], we took the decision to come back on the pitch to give everything – which we did.”
The penalty, once awarded, would be delayed by almost a quarter of an hour while Thiaw and many players pursued the idea of a boycott and then, speaking to Mane, reversed that decision.
Brahim waited to take the spot-kick. He chose a lofted ‘Panenka’ technique. He chose wrong. A soft, underhit attempt floated gently at Senegal goalkeeper Eduoard Mendy.
So poorly struck was Brahim’s penalty – the single shot that would have given Morocco their first Afcon in 50 years, struck with seconds left of time added on for stoppages – that Regragui hardly needed to reach for alibis to explain it.
The accumulated pressure had been suffocating. The raging controversy, the uncertainty of whether a Senegal goalkeeper would even return to the pitch for the spot-kick and the long delay had weighed on the penalty-taker’s mind.
“The match stopped, in front of the eyes of the world for [more than] 10 minutes,” said Regragui. “That didn’t help Brahim. That doesn't excuse Brahim for the way he struck the penalty. He struck it like that and we have to accept it. We were one minute from being African champions. That’s football. It’s often cruel.”
With Brahim’s fluffed spot-kick saved, referee Jean-Jacques Ndala signalled extra-time. Senegal, the team who had wanted to head straight home, forfeiting the final, almost immediately took the lead, through the dynamic Pape Gueye.
They held it until Ndala blew his whistle with 120 minutes played, the substituted Brahim’s spirit broken and Morocco beaten into second place.
There had been violence in a section of the crowd, too, riot police clashing with some Senegal supporters who had stepped forward from their seats towards the pitch in the moments ahead of Brahim eventually taking his penalty.
“The image we’ve given of Africa is shameful,” said Regragui of the raised tempers, the threatened walk-off. He blamed Thiaw. “A coach who asks his players to leave the field? What Pape did does not honour Africa. He had already started at it in the [pre-match] press conference. He wasn’t classy.”
The reference there was to Senegal’s stern pre-match complaints about perceived hurdles placed on their path to success by their hosts. Thiaw said crowd control shortcomings had put his players “in danger” when they arrived in Rabat two days before the final.
His federation issued a statement complaining about deficiencies in the accommodation for the team and ticket allocation for the final, and that Senegal had been assigned a practice site on the same campus Morocco were using, implying their tactical plans might be spied on.
All of which made very public the atmosphere of distrust that spreads across many African countries towards Morocco. Some of it dates back a decade, to when the kingdom was scheduled to host Afcon and withdrew at short notice, citing risks of contagion from the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa at the time. The abandonment of their hosting responsibilities damaged the relationship between Morocco and the football community of the continent.
Yet in the period since, Morocco has surged to be a leader of the game in Africa and in the Arab world. It has raised standards on the field, through Regragui’s team reaching the semi-final of the last World Cup to the triumph of the Under-20 men’s side at the 2025 junior World Cup.
Morocco’s hardware gifts to Africa are enduring, too: the magnificent stadiums that have staged matches at the Nations Cup mean that, in 2030, a large tranche of the senior World Cup will take place in North Africa.
With that role as continental leader comes suspicion. “It is hard to play against a host nation,” said Thiaw ahead of the final. Samuel Eto’o, a former great of African football as a player and champion, thought so too, in his capacity as president of the Cameroon Football Federation.
When Cameroon lost to Morocco in the quarter-final here, Eto’o made plain and public his disgust at refereeing decisions he thought went against his compatriots.
And in a tournament that for all but its last chaotic day had been smoothly run, played on excellent pitches and in superb arenas, there was a consistent let-down – the refereeing. Some of it was good; too often it was not.
In the end, there is no overwhelming argument that the best team at Afcon are not its champions. Morocco, under the now beleaguered Regragui, were excellent at times, buoyed, until his fateful error, by Brahim.
But Senegal had been just as excellent, and admirable above all for their composure. Except for those 20 surreal, furious minutes of the interrupted final, when the Senegalese almost crossed the brink of sportsmanship – until wiser heads prevailed.
