Morocco needed a win to boost their chances of making it to the next round of the Mundial, although it initially seemed very difficult but the North Africans secured their first win in Qatar against the highly rated Belgian national team.
Morocco left it late but defeated the second best team in the world according to FIFA ranking by 2-0 on Sunday afternoon.
It was an outstanding result for Morocco as it won its third-ever match at a World Cup – one which sends it top of Group F after two games.
The North African nation had only previously claimed victories against Portugal in 1986 and Scotland in 1998, but this win against the No. 2-ranked country in the world is surely the best of the bunch.
Abdelhamid Sabiri’s goal set off Moroccan celebrations in the 75th minute, but Zakaria Aboukhlal put the cherry on top of a historic win in injury time.
There are also some connections between the two teams as the Morocco squad includes four players — Ilias Chair, Anass Zaroury, Selim Amallah and Bilal El Khannous — who were born in Belgium.
But just before the match, Morocco head coach Walid Regragui had urged those with connections to Belgium to remain focused on the task at hand.
“For any dual national … they have a special emotion and that’s a positive energy and you have to draw on that,” Regragui told reporters, per Reuters.
“But it is a match that we need to win (irrespective) of who we are playing. We have to focus on that.
“We know that this is a special match for them, but we have to put that into context. You cannot get too emotional because that could lead you to make mistakes. And that could be very expensive for us.”
Morocco awaits the encounter between Canada and Croatia to know who would eventually top group F going into the last game of the group phase,