Football / Soccer / Calcio / Futebol / Fußball

I really think people underestimated the irony of Morocco knocking out both Spain and Portugal lol

If you want to go back that far then we can also bring up the Barbary pirates enslaving millions of europeans including spaniards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_on_the_Barbary_Coast

Man the significance of that run was beyond magical, the two years preceding the WC felt so tense as Halilozidc was just a pain to deal with: he guaranteed results, but his football was just so ugly to watch, and he had a feud with Ziyech and Mazraoui, kicking them out until a few weeks before his sacking

We got drawn in probably the hardest group in the tournament, canada was underrated af.

After the world cup draw in 2018 (our first appearance since 20 years), we moroccans sarcastically decided our run will be the following to get out of the group: Beat Iran and Portugal and draw Spain. Of course we ended up losing against both iran and portugal and drew spain (fuck VAR btw, people in this subreddit are finally realising it after their favourite teams have fallen victim for it), but it became a meme for the 2022 hard group we got: beat croatia and canada and draw belgium as a joke because no way we'd make it out of the group.

Beating both spain and portugal not only was probably the most stressful 120+90 minutes of football I've ever experienced in my life, but also the most enjoyable ever, we'd basically park the bus but instead of pathetically kicking the ball out of play the players would play tricks on the rivals, stuff your friends would do to each other in the style of north african street football.

And obviously, the political aspect of beating both portugal but especially spain after some recent political crisis between the two countries meant people were even more patriotic, leading to nonstop celebrations for days, people already feel nostalgic about ´those days' because everyone was unanimously happy even in bad conditions from the pride, and it's only normal when Morocco is the first arab/African country to reach the semis, nobody would've predicted this (but Etoo I guess)