Football
Africa Records Best WC Performance As Morocco Finished Fourth.
- Morocco will receive $25 Million for finishing fourth in this year’s World Cup.
- Morocco now holds the record of the longest unbeaten run by an African nation at the World Cup with six wins. Cameroon comes second with five wins unbeaten.
- Morocco joins Cameroon as the only two African nations with most wins in a single World Cup with three wins each ( Cameroon in 1990 and Morocco in 2022)
- Morocco and Nigeria have now kept the most clean sheets for Africa at the World Cup with seven each. Cameroon has five.
- Morocco goalkeeper Yassine Bounou is the only African goalkeeper with three clean sheets – with Thomas Nkono, Ezaki Zaki, Peter Rufai, Boubacar Barry, Vincent Enyema and Aymen Dahmen with two clean sheets each.
- Walid Regragrui reached the World Cup semi-final after only eight games in charge of Morocco – the lowest number of games before reaching this stage since Otto Gloria with Portugal in 1966 with five games.
Morocco becomes the first African nation to end a world cup tournament in the top four after reaching the Semifinals of this year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
The Atlas Lions were on the brink of finishing third and becoming the first African nation to mount the podium at the World Cup but that dream was shattered as they lost the third-place match to 2018 finalists Croatia.
Both sides had failed in the semis but had pride and honour a stake as the Al Khalifa International stadium was full to watch another breathtaking game for Africa.
Croatia were runner-up in 2018 to France four ago – confirming their elite status as one of the elite football nations on the planet with a 2-1 win over the north African nation.
Josko Gvardiol gave Croatia the lead in seven minutes with a brilliant header but Achraf Dari levelled just two minutes later.
Luka Modric in his 162 caps was still at the heart of the midfield as Mislav Orsic scored the second for the Croats three minutes before halftime.
The 1976 African champions fought for an equalizer but couldn’t break the Croatian defence.
The next stop for Morocco is the AFCON qualifiers as head coach Walid Regragrui has set the objective to win the next AFCON in Ivory Coast.