Morocco’s World Cup Soccer Team Used Prayer To Win Games And Crowds
AL RAYYAN, Qatar — A sea of fans clad in red and green will be making their way into Khalifa International Stadium just outside the Qatari capital of Doha come Saturday evening. The thousands who will pack the 46,000-seat venue will be there not to see World Cup finalists Argentina and France.
Those two heavyweights play each other Sunday for the World Cup title. Instead, these fans will come to see — and cheer for — Morocco as they have over the last few weeks.
A day before the game and Morocco fans, many of them locals who adopted the North African team as their own after Qatar was dumped out of the tournament in the group stage, gathered and waved flags in anticipation of the third-place match.
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The team, nicknamed the Atlas Lions, became the first African nation to reach a World Cup semifinals in the tournament’s 92-year history. Not only were they representing the African continent, but over the past four weeks was also a team that galvanized the Arab world behind it. People across North Africa and the Middle East put aside centuries of hostilities to back Morocco.
Many traveled to Qatar, the first Muslim nation to ever host a World Cup, in order to see them play in person. The players repaid the crowds with a series of brilliant games, including knocking out Portugal and superstar Cristiano Ronaldo in the quarterfinals. While Morocco proved teamwork was their winning formula, the players were also not afraid to put their Muslim faith on full display before and after matches.
It doesn’t matter where Morocco ultimately finishes at this tournament. Morocco are already the favorite of many fans. Everyone loves an underdog story, but Morocco wasn’t just about skill, tactics and victories. This was a team made up of 26 players who as a group found in God — referred to in Arabic as Allah — the strength and motivation to win games. It was also a larger story about how Islam is viewed around throughout the world, among the different nationalities that make up the Arab world and past European colonialism.
Qatari fans repping both Morocco and Argentina ahead of this weekend’s World Cup finale. Photo by Clemente Lisi.
“Many Moroccans and non-Moroccans took pride and joy in the North African state’s Cinderella-like march through the tournament against the backdrop of colonial history, decades of Islam having been put post-9/11 on the defensive amid rising Islamophobia, and as an expression of the rebalancing of global power between West and East,” said James Dorsey, an award-winning journalist and scholar who has his own Substack page on Middle Eastern soccer.
Ahead of the team’s win on Dec. 6 via a penalty-kick shootout against Spain in the round of 16, the players and coaching staff — including manager Walid Regragui — recited the Quran’s Surah Al-Fatiha, a prayer that directs Muslim believers to invoke God to guide them towards a just path.
After the shock win, the players celebrated by prostrating before the crowd in a sign of humility.
Although the team could not get past defending champions France in the semifinals this past Wednesday, Morocco’s ability to exceed expectations during this amazing run has made them this tournament’s true champions to many across Qatar and beyond.
Even in defeat, the players praised Allah.
“I told the players that I was proud of them, that the Moroccan people were proud of them and that the rest of the world was proud to see a Moroccan team reach this level,” Regragui said.
Throughout this memorable run, several Moroccan players waved Palestinian and Qatari flags. In displaying the flag of Palestine, the team showed solidarity with their Arab brothers. As Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s ambassador to the United Nations, recently noted: “The winner of this World Cup is already known – it is Palestine.”
“As genuine as World Cup fans’ support of the Palestinians was, the emergence of Palestine as a touchstone for the gap between elites and public opinion constituted a throwback to the days when Palestinians were a lightning rod for widespread frustration with non-performing, autocratic Arab regimes,” Dorsey noted. “In a subtle, or perhaps not so subtle way, Palestine served Qatar’s purpose. It allowed Qatar to point the finger at its Gulf rivals, particularly the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. These two Arab states were at the forefront of the 3 1/2-year-long UAE-Saudi-led economic and diplomatic boycott of the Gulf state that was lifted in early 2021 and recognized Israel in 2020.”
He also said Qatar “justified its banning” of the OneLove armband (meant to support LGBTQ rights) and anti-Iranian slogans (given the controversy there regarding the hijab) “by pointing to FIFA’s ban on all political expression on the pitch.”
“It’s unclear whether FIFA extended the ban to the pro-Palestine campaign or whether Qatar chose to ignore the FIFA rule selectively,” he added.
Some pointed out the double standard, but the people of Qatar, and across much of the Arab world, didn’t care.
But Regragui wasn’t interested in talking politics or religion after losing to France. Instead, the Morocco coach was trying to put this World Cup in perspective.
“It is difficult for the players to accept the defeat because they were determined to make history,” he said, “but the image they gave the world of Moroccan soccer equals a World Cup victory.”
Clemente Lisi is a senior editor at Religion Unplugged and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. He is the author of “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event.” Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.