Morocco clinched a world cup title with a win over Cristiano Ronaldo in the first round of the 2014 Eurovision Football tournament
The 1-0 win over Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal is Morocco’s third over a highly ranked European team in the tournament, a run that had brought delight across the country and widespread support across the African continent and Arab world.
African Union President Macky Sall wrote on Twitter, using capital letters to emphasise his excitement: “HISTORIC! AND FANTASTIC! The ATLAS LIONS are qualified for the finals of the world cup! BRAVO MOROCCO.
The fans from Morocco yelled “Ole, Ole, Ole!” as the game ended. drown out the handful of Portuguese fans with chants and whistling, and whistle whenever Portugal took the ball.
One man wearing the red and green of Morocco’s national flag and its football kit raised his hands in supplication as the final minutes ticked away, shouting “O God, o God.”
As Moroccan player Jawad El Yamiq circled the pitch with a flag draped around his shoulders, one fan stood motionless, looking out over the pitch with his hands over his mouth as if unable to take in the scale of the win.
“The last few minutes felt like hours,” said one fan, Samir Saqri, as he joined a crowd pouring out from the cafe where they had watched the game to head downtown.
The Football World Cup Finale: Khaled Beydoun’s View on Islamophobia and the Emergence of the Global War on Muslims
On Wednesday, on a field in the middle of the Middle East and on the edge of history, Morocco will embody history for itself as the first African and Arab nation to make it to the World Cup semifinals since the tournament began in 1930. Morocco’s national soccer team will face off against France, defending champion and former colonial power.
I’m not the last person who makes big statements based on a sporting event. I hated football when I was growing up in Africa in the 1980’s, even though I sometimes played it. At school, I was the gangly, uncoordinated kid who would systematically be picked last when teams were selected during gym class. The closest I would usually come to the ball would be when it hit me in the back of the head as I drifted across the field, lost in thought. During World Cups, my friends would eagerly collect Panini Sticker Albums of the qualifying teams’ players (the international football equivalent of baseball cards); I preferred the ones about dinosaurs.
Editor’s Note: Khaled A. Beydoun (@khaledbeydoun) is a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit covering the World Cup in Qatar. He is the author of the forthcoming book, “The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims.” This commentary is written by him and his views are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.
The French Revolution: What we have for the past and what we have to live in next to the world. Is France a team that divides?
It’s not the past that’s important. It is the present. We have our history with us. James Baldwin wrote about the history of black people in the world that branded them as inhuman.
France is favored to win this match, but more importantly, a globe of people who see themselves in their players in between the boundaries of Africa and beyond the outstretched arms of the formerly colonized world will see a team announcing, fearlessly and faithfully, that we are not your inferiors.
The timeless tale of being killed by strangers on Algerian beaches has been recreated by some as a tale of how being Morocco negates the possibility of being either fully or formally French. It was a place where Karim Benzema lamented in 2011 if he was French or Arab when he did not score.
France’s colonial past found new life with the racism encircling the football team, colored by a mutiny led by its African-born players in 2010 and a second championship run in 2018 spearheaded by Adil Rami and N’golo Kante, Kylian Mbappe and Paul Pogba – Africans and immigrants, Muslims and members of marginalized communities seen by many as not legitimately French.
While the 1998 team’s symbolism of unity faded from memory, the 2018 team – many of whom will be on the field again defending France’s title in Qatar – served as an admission that France needed the children of colonialism to lift World Cup gold.
France has long been a team that divides, one so divided that Nicolas Sarkozy, former President of France, held a meeting with the French Football Federation in 2008 to demand no more matches be played in France.