On a warm June Wednesday in Mexico in 1986, the ‘Group of Sleep’ woke up. Locals had dubbed Group F at the 13th World Cup as doze-inducing because it seemed so dull. Its first four games had produced just two goals. Morocco, like England, had scored none of them, but still lurked in second place, jointly with Portugal, behind Poland.
Going into the last 90 minutes against the Portuguese, cautious Morocco spied a place in history, as the first African team to make the second phase of a World Cup. All they needed to guarantee progress was a victory.
It’s a scenario to be repeated, the bar now set even higher – a place in the last four.
If the main echoes, 36 years on, are clear, they also resonate through the details of then and now. Back in 1986, the Atlas Lions had come to their landmark moment, one celebrated across the Arabic-speaking world, by outsmarting a so-called traditional giant of the sport. And they had also stymied the bronze-medallists from the previous World Cup.
In 1986, that was Poland, held to a 0-0 draw; in 2022, it was Belgium, semi-finalists four years ago, but beaten 2-0 by Morocco two weekends ago.
In 1986, the frustrated aristocrats were England, who had Ray Wilkins, sent off, and their gameplan scorned by the Moroccan midfielder Abdelkrim Merry as “from the Middle Ages.”
In 2022, in Al Rayyan, the humiliated heavyweights were Spain, a team also burdened by tactical dogmas, big on possession, but effectively tamed over 120 minutes of a tie settled on penalties by a Morocco who on Saturday can set a new standard for their continent and for the Mena region by reaching a World Cup semi-final.
More echoes: three and a half decades ago, Morocco’s cagey style during their qualification – a rearguard marshalled by their outstanding goalkeeper Ezzaki Badou conceded once in eight qualifiers – and in Group F received some criticism. To which Morocco’s Brazilian coach, Jose Farias had a simple reply: “We’d like to play beautiful football, but you can’t always do that, especially coming into a big tournament. You have to protect yourselves."
He added, pointedly: “If you want to see spectacular football, watch Hungary.” Hungary had lost 6-0 to the Soviet Union earlier in the tournament.
Fast forward to December 2022, and to listen to Walid Regragui, the coach who has made the 2022 Atlas Lions so hard to beat – just one goal conceded in six and half hours at this World Cup – is to hear something very similar. “In this sort of competition, you have to choose between the spectacular and achieving your objectives,” Regragui said ahead of containing the Spanish. “We have chosen: It is hard to get past us.”
Watching the final last-16 in Qatar, he might have nervously added that if you want spectacular, you can watch Switzerland. The Swiss lost 6-1 to Portugal while Moroccans were still celebrating their place in the quarter-finals on Tuesday.
The Portuguese must start as favourites at Al Thumama Stadium, but older Moroccans will recall that was also the case in 1986. Portugal had been European championship semi-finalists two summers earlier. They had a gifted young prodigy, 20-year-old Paulo Futre, in their attack.
Yet on the day, Morocco took off the handbrake and triumphed 3-1, topping the wide-awake Group of Sleep. They only missed out on the last eight when West Germany scored a 88th-minute free-kick for the only goal of Morocco’s last-16 tie.
For Futre then, read 21-year-old Goncalo Ramos now, fresh from his hat-trick against the Swiss, a stellar replacement for the dropped Cristiano Ronaldo in the Portugal starting XI and a challenge for a Morocco defence with injury doubts.
A benched Ronaldo, the likely scenario on Saturday, would at least remove one ghost from the past. In Russia four years ago, a Ronaldo header after four minutes, the only goal of the game, eliminated Morocco in only the second matchday of a tough group.
From that dispiriting exit to the soaring achievement at Qatar 2022 is a significant leap, but in the longer stretch of history, it is just another pathfinding step in the longer tale of Moroccan World Cup milestones.
Back in 1970, they were the first African nation to claim a World Cup point, drawing with Bulgaria in the first Mexico World Cup. They had led West Germany at half-time in their opening game, only to lose 2-1.
Romain Saiss, the captain of what is now the most successful Morocco team in any World Cup, has urged his colleagues to raise the bar again. “We want to make more history,” he said. “We want to go beyond the previous limits.”
Company%C2%A0profile
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Bharat
Director: Ali Abbas Zafar
Starring: Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Sunil Grover
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
The Details
Kabir Singh
Produced by: Cinestaan Studios, T-Series
Directed by: Sandeep Reddy Vanga
Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Kiara Advani, Suresh Oberoi, Soham Majumdar, Arjun Pahwa
Rating: 2.5/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12
Power: 819hp
Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm
Price: From Dh1,700,000
Available: Now
BUNDESLIGA FIXTURES
Friday (all kick-offs UAE time)
Hertha Berlin v Union Berlin (10.30pm)
Saturday
Freiburg v Werder Bremen (5.30pm)
Paderborn v Hoffenheim (5.30pm)
Wolfsburg v Borussia Dortmund (5.30pm)
Borussia Monchengladbach v Bayer Leverkusen (5.30pm)
Bayern Munich v Eintracht Frankfurt (5.30pm)
Sunday
Schalke v Augsburg (3.30pm)
Mainz v RB Leipzig (5.30pm)
Cologne v Fortuna Dusseldorf (8pm)
The biog
Name: Abeer Al Bah
Born: 1972
Husband: Emirati lawyer Salem Bin Sahoo, since 1992
Children: Soud, born 1993, lawyer; Obaid, born 1994, deceased; four other boys and one girl, three months old
Education: BA in Elementary Education, worked for five years in a Dubai school
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Korean Film Festival 2019 line-up
Innocent Witness, June 26 at 7pm
On Your Wedding Day, June 27 at 7pm
The Great Battle, June 27 at 9pm
The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion, June 28 at 4pm
Romang, June 28 at 6pm
Mal Mo E: The Secret Mission, June 28 at 8pm
Underdog, June 29 at 2pm
Nearby Sky, June 29 at 4pm
A Resistance, June 29 at 6pm
Winners
Best Men's Player of the Year: Kylian Mbappe (PSG)
Maradona Award for Best Goal Scorer of the Year: Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)
TikTok Fans’ Player of the Year: Robert Lewandowski
Top Goal Scorer of All Time: Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United)
Best Women's Player of the Year: Alexia Putellas (Barcelona)
Best Men's Club of the Year: Chelsea
Best Women's Club of the Year: Barcelona
Best Defender of the Year: Leonardo Bonucci (Juventus/Italy)
Best Goalkeeper of the Year: Gianluigi Donnarumma (PSG/Italy)
Best Coach of the Year: Roberto Mancini (Italy)
Best National Team of the Year: Italy
Best Agent of the Year: Federico Pastorello
Best Sporting Director of the Year: Txiki Begiristain (Manchester City)
Player Career Award: Ronaldinho
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Scores
Oman 109-3 in 18.4 overs (Aqib Ilyas 45 not out, Aamir Kaleem 27) beat UAE 108-9 in 20 overs (Usman 27, Mustafa 24, Fayyaz 3-16, Bilal 3-23)
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre, twin-turbocharged V8
Transmission: nine-speed automatic
Power: 630bhp
Torque: 900Nm
Price: Dh810,000
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Know your cyber adversaries
Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
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Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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3.
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UAE
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Japan
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5
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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